A former firefighter saved the life of a pensioner buried alive in the Asian earthquake.

Geoff Parkinson, 38, from Battle, had flown out to Pakistan-administered Kashmir with the Search and Rescue Assistance in Disasters (SARAID) charity.

The 12-strong team was searching a house in Medina, a market town in the Muzaffarbad business district of Kashmir, when they discovered the man in his 70s under the pile of rubble which had been his home before the disaster.

Mr Parkinson, now a farm worker, said: "I knocked on a large piece of concrete to see if anyone was alive, and someone knocked back. It was surprising because we weren't expecting anything back.

"He shouted back in Urdu. Obviously, I don't speak Urdu but every time I spoke he spoke back so we at least knew he was there."

The team used heavy timber and a long metal bar to lever bricks away in order to make a small hole through which they could pull the man out to safety.

Mr Parkinson said: "He had been trapped in there for four days. None of the rubble had fallen on him, and we only needed to make a small space. It was a bit like playing Jenga to move the bricks around him away without everything else collapsing.

"He told a member of our team who speaks Urdu that he wanted to adopt me one day as his son. There are a lot of occasions that teams travel overseas and don't find anybody but this was a very rewarding moment."

During the week SARAID was in Medina, the team was part of an international camp that rescued a total of 24 survivors.

The rescues brought renewed hope that more survivors may still be pulled from the debris of buildings flattened by the earthquake that shook South East Asia on October 8.

But new figures from officials have revealed that at least 40,000 people in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir died in the quake.

SARAID uncovered more than 50 dead bodies. One of these people died when there was a series of five or six aftershocks after the team had already spent 16 hours trying to dig the woman out.

The aftershocks toppled what was left of the building before she could be pulled to safety. The team put a camera probe on a stick through the rubble to confirm she was dead.

Mr Parkinson said: "Our visit was a humbling experience. The place will be cut off when snow arrives in the next four to six weeks. It will be a very bleak time. Many people will be living in tents for a long time."

Other operations run by SARAID have included sending workers to Sri Lanka following the Boxing Day tsunami.

The charity has also mounted rescue operations after earthquakes in Turkey and Algeria.