Rescue of elderly woman gives heart to Japan quake aid effort battling against the clock and criticism

WAJIMA, Ishikawa – Hopes of locating survivors are fast fading, six days after a magnitude-7.6 New Year’s Day earthquake killed at least 128 people and injured 560, with the safety of another 195 still unaccounted for.

But rescue teams received a morale boost on Jan 6, when they miraculously located an elderly woman in her 90s alive but with a weak pulse in the rubble of a collapsed home some 124 hours after the tremor.