Japan’s ‘miracle survivor’ story turns out to be fake

March 20th, 2011 - 1:44 pm ICT by ANI  

Tokyo, Mar 20 (ANI): The news of a ‘miracle survivor’ pulled from the rubble eight days after the devastating earthquake-cum-tsunami in Japan, has turned out be fake.

Emergency workers had initially claimed that they had found a man in his 20s at about 9a.m. local time in a ruined three-storey house in Kesennuma in Miyagi prefecture.

The man, identified as Katsuharu Moriya, was said to have survived raging fires following the tsunami, and freezing conditions that followed over eight nights, wrapped in only a thin blanket.

However, it emerged later that he had escaped the earthquake and tsunami, but returned to the house on Friday and fallen unconscious, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.

‘When the person was transported to hospital, a fire department official recognised him as an evacuee who had been in a centre for a week and who had tried to return to his home,’ a Self Defence Forces spokesman said.

Moriya’s supposed rescue after 186 hours was thought to be extraordinary, but the story was false.

Thousands of residents of Kesennuma are still missing. (ANI)

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