He has good genes — and plenty of good luck, too.
A 101-year-old man amazingly survived being buried under the rubble of the Nepal earthquake for seven days before he was finally rescued, authorities said Sunday.
The plucky centenarian, identified as Funchu Tamang, was one of at least seven people who were pulled from the debris alive in recent days. Authorities said he suffered only minor injuries.
Police pulled Tamang from the debris of his collapsed house in the Nuwakot district, about 50 miles from Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, on Saturday.
Rescuers airlifted the man by helicopter to a hospital, where officials said he was in stable condition.
His rescue came as three other women were unearthed in Sindhupalchowk, one of the hardest-hit districts. Emergency workers in the mountainous village of Syauli also found three other survivors in the rubble, two men and one woman.
But news of such rescues has dwindled, replaced by the growing death toll that topped 7,250 by Sunday evening and was expected to climb “much higher,” officials said.
Along a popular trekking route in the northern district of Rasuwa, rescuers found about 50 bodies of people killed and buried under an avalanche.
The same landslide wiped out Langtang, a tiny village along the route, throwing dozens of homes down the mountainside.
The United Nations estimates that the earthquake destroyed more than 120,000 houses.
“Our priority now is really to try to reach those people [in remote areas], get immediate assistance to them,” said the UN’s head of humanitarian affairs Valerie Amos.