Wednesday, August 27, 1997
The University Daily Kansan
Section A · Page 9
Ski instructor tells of days buried by landslide rubble
SYDNEY, Australia — For a moment, when he realized his wife Sally lay dead beside him in the icy mud of a landslide, Stuart Diver wanted to die, too.
"Get it over with,' I thought," said Diver, the sole survivor of a July 30 landslide at a ski lodge that killed 18 people, including two Americans. "If you're going to take me, just do it. Cover me up and make it quick."
But the 27-year-old ski instructor also credited the memory of his wife for providing him with the spirit to survive 65 hours buried alive.
"In my heart, I know that it was Sally's will, her resilience of spirit, that gave me the strength I needed to hold out, to hold on, when all logic told me hope had vanished," he said.
Diver yesterday gave the first detailed accounts of his ordeal, which started when a landslide swept one ski lodge onto another at
Diver survived three days trapped in the icy water, with frostbitten feet as his only serious injuries.
On July 30, a noise like an explosion woke the couple, seconds later the world around them collapsed.
Both survived the initial impact, and for a few seconds, Diver struggled to help his sobbing wife, whose body was pinned to the bed and whose head pointed down the mountain.
"She was screaming, and then I heard the water coming," Diver said of the agonizing minutes as his wife drowned. Trapped in a barely man-sized cavity next to his dead wife, death seemed a good option.
But anguish turned to anger and that, along with knowledge of relatives waiting outside, steeled his determination to survive.
"I couldn't let them down. not
when I had come so far." he said.
Diver gradually lost feeling in his feet and became hungry and thirsty. Hallucinating periodically, fantasy and reality became difficult to distinguish.
"I could hear the work going on above me and I knew they were searching for people, he said. "They had to be. I could hear the machinery, the choppers. Even conversations. No matter how much I shouted or what noise I made, I couldn't make them hear me."
Rescuers first discovered Diver using sensitive sounding equipment.
Early on Aug. 2, firefighter Steve Hirst called out. "Is anyone there?"
"That was the moment I came back to life." Diver said.
Rescuers intensified their efforts, fearing more landslides. First physical contact came hours later, when paramedic Paul Featherstone poked a hand through a hole punched in the concrete wall. After more hours of digging, Diver was pulled free.
South African leader resigns
The Associated Press
CAPE TOWN, South Africa — Former President F.W. de Klerk, who shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in dismantling apartheid, resigned yesterday as leader of the party that created it.
De Klerk is quitting politics to give his party a chance to regroup before the 1999 elections. Divided and in disarray, the party is trying to stay alive in a drastically changed political landscape.
"With my retirement, I wish to open a door for the National Party to provide further proof of its dynamic break with the past," de Klerk told reporters.
Party officials said the 61-year-old de Klerk would stay on until a new leader was chosen on Sept. 9.
When he became president in 1969,
de Klerk was viewed as a moderate expected to protect apartheid. Instead, he declared that white domination would have to disappear, otherwise there would never be peace in South Africa.
Mandela said he hoped the country would remember how de Klerk, who freed him from 27 years in prison, helped bring about a peaceful transformation.
"Whatever mistakes he may have made, and it is possible that he has made very fundamental mistakes as many of us have done, I hope South Africa will not forget the role he has played," Mandela said.
De Klerk and Mandela shared the
1993 Nobel Peace Prize.
De Klerk, the scion of generations of conservative Afrikaner stock, could never bring himself to condemn apartheid outright. He has described it as a well-meaning concept that started out with great idealism.
But he said he had realized apartheid could not work and decided a peaceful handover of power was preferable to violent revolution.
The National Party has been hit hard by internal divisions and defections by some more moderate members, led by Roelf Meyer, the government negotiator during the transition to black majority rule.
Meyer has announced plans to form a new party Sept. 27 with former African National Congress stalwart Bantu Holomisa, who was expelled from the ANC for criticizing party officials.
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