'Mummy I got buried. Please make it quick'

[n2doc]

Tragic tale of desperate text messages sent from beneath the Christchurch rubble

By Tim Hume in Christchurch

Saturday, 26 February 2011
Trapped beneath the rubble of Christchurch's CTV building, Louise Amantillo sent increasingly desperate pleas to her faraway family for help.

"Mummy, I got buried," read her first text message from the aftermath of what may prove New Zealand's deadliest disaster. "Mummy, I can't move my right hand."

For hours following Tuesday's 6.3-magnitude earthquake, the 23-year-old student communicated with her parents in the Philippines, with chilling descriptions of her pain and terror as rescuers failed to appear. "We told her, 'You can make it, you can make it. Be strong and pray,' " said her father, Alexander. Contending with failing phone networks, they managed a brief phone conversation. The last time Linda Amantillo heard her daughter's voice, it was "shaking, like she was really scared. I know she was in pain".

The Amantillos, who live in Iloilo province in central Philippines, have sent a relative in New Zealand to comb Christchurch's hospitals for their daughter. But there has been no sign of her since her final message at 3:32pm on Tuesday: "Please make it quick."

A nurse who had come to New Zealand to study English, Amantillo is one of up to 120 people police believe to have perished in the CTV building, the site of the greatest number of casualties so far. The four-storey headquarters of the local television station was also home to King's Education language school, from which 46 foreign students are now missing. "This is not just New Zealand's tragedy," said Foreign Minister Murray McCully yesterday.

more

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/mummy-i-got-buried-please-make-it-quick-2226089.html

[Inspired]

1. Heartbreaking. Too sad for words.

[deutsey]

2. Heartbreaking.

:evilfrown:

[DeadEyeDyck]

3. Never give up hope