Two North Yorkshire men are among the British rescuers who were today continuing to search for survivors amid the rubble of the Indian earthquake.

One, of the pair, Ray Gray, is team leader with the International Rescue Corps, which is helping to free victims from the rubble as the death toll was estimated at up to 30,000 - with 125,000 reported missing.

Yesterday rescuers pulled a seven-year-old boy from under a collapsed housing block nearly 60 hours after the earthquake hit the western state of Gujarat.

Two hours later, the 69-strong rescue team rescued the boy's 28-year-old mother.

Earlier the British team, which includes Mr Gray, from Selby, and coastguard Simon Drayton, of Seamer, near Scarborough, found the first survivor less than three hours after arriving in the city of Bhuj.

Father of two, Mr Gray, 44, of Primrose Grove, who arrived at Bhuj over the weekend said: "There are a lot of people here sleeping in the streets as they can't go back into buildings.

"The aftershocks have got more frequent as the day has gone on. We have just had three in the last hour - some quite big.

"It's a little bit like taking part in a puzzle. You have to think three steps ahead. We try to prop up debris, but after-shocks could bring the whole building down."

Mr Gray, a full-time Unison officer in Leeds, specialises in burrowing into collapsed buildings where survivors are detected with thermal image cameras.

He added: "Time is something these people don't have, so we are trying to work flat out until we are too tired."

Medical student Matthew Cartwright-Terry, 25, from Thirsk, was caught up in the quake, but managed to send a message home to his family on Saturday. The bus he was on suddenly started weaving across the road.

He said: "I realised there were thousands of people spilling-out on to the streets.

"I saw apartment blocks that had just folded - they were no more than piles of rubble."

Updated: 11:27 Monday, January 29, 2001