Baby rescued from rubble of Japan earthquake

A BABY girl who had been asleep when a deadly earthquake struck Japan was rescued from the rubble of a destroyed home after a six-hour rescue operation.

Baby saved from Japan earthquake

A BABY girl who had been asleep when a deadly earthquake struck Japan was pulled out unscathed from the rubble of a destroyed home overnight after a six-hour rescue effort, reports the New York Post.

The joyous moment was captured on TV as the eight-month-old girl was removed from the collapsed house in the devastated southeastern town of Mashiki.

She was on the first floor when the 7.0-magnitude quake rocked the region Thursday night as her mother, grandparents and four-year-old brother were in the kitchen and living room.

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The eight-month-old baby was asleep when the earthquake hit. Picture: Kumamoto Prefectural Police.

Fallen crossbeams from the roof created a pocket of protection around the lucky tot, whose mother couldn’t reach amid the destruction. A team of about 50 people dug through the debris to reach the baby.

At least nine people were killed and more than 800 were injured by the earthquake, which produced more than 134 aftershocks overnight.

About 1600 soldiers were deployed to help with the rescue and clean-up efforts as about 44,000 people sought refuge, The Telegraph reported.

Drone footage has captured the damage in the aftermath of the deadly quake. See below.

A still shocked resident recounted his terror from the previous night as he examined the damage.

“It’s as if all control was lost, I thought I was going to die and I couldn’t bear it any longer,” said Yuichiro Yoshikado, who was taking a bath in his apartment in Mashiki.

“I grabbed onto the sides of the bathtub, but the water in the tub, it was about 70 per cent filled with water, was going like this,” he said waving his arms, “and all the water splashed out.”

Members of the Japan Self-Defense Forces make rice balls at an evacuation centre in Mashiki. Picture: Masterpress.

The quake struck near the city of Kumamoto on the island of Kyushu, about 800 miles southwest of Tokyo. Mashiki is on Kumamoto’s eastern border, about 9 miles from the city’s centre.

“Everyone in Kumamoto is still in a panic,” Yoshikado said. “We see in the news phrases like ‘Major earthquake in Kumamoto,’ or ‘The Kumamoto Quake,’ but it just doesn’t seem real. It feels like something that would happen somewhere else.”

This story originally appeared in the New York Post