Rescuers pull out two more survivors

An army soldier tries to detect signs of life in the rubble of a collapsed building in Tainan, Taiwan. (AP PHOTO)

TAINAN, Taiwan — Two survivors — one found shielded under the body of her husband — were pulled out alive from a toppled high-rise apartment building on Monday, two days after a powerful quake in southern Taiwan killed at least 37.

Taiwan’s Eastern Broadcasting Corp. reported that Tsao Wei-ling called out “Here I am” as rescuers dug through to find her. A male survivor, Lee Tsung-tien, 42, was pulled out conscious from the sixth floor section of the folded 17-story building.

Rescuers also found signs of life from a 28-year-old woman who is a migrant worker and an 8-year-old girl, both conscious but trapped in the fifth-floor section, according to a notice posted at a rescue information center on site.

More than 100 people are believed to be still buried in the collapsed building from a disaster that struck during the most important family holiday in the Chinese calendar — the Lunar New Year holiday.

Family members of the missing continued to flood into the information center in search of their loved ones or anxiously sit by. Some of them walked around with green name cards around their necks indicating their missing relative’s name and location in the building.

The government in Tainan, the worst-hit city, said that more than 170 people had been rescued from the 17-story building, which folded like an accordion after the quake struck.

“It was all topsy-turvy. You couldn’t even tell where the ceiling was,” a 15-year-old survivor, only identified by his surname, Hu, said on EBC Television. He said he had crawled out of a window to alert rescuers to his parents’ location, and they were all rescued soon after Saturday’s quake.

The death toll from the powerful 6.4-magnitude quake stood at 37. Thirty-five were from the building that collapsed in Tainan City, and two other people died elsewhere in the city.