Woman rescued from rubble 17 days after Bangladesh clothing factory collapsed killing more than 1,000 people
A seamstress wept with relief as she was pulled alive from the rubble of the Bangladesh clothing factory, 17 days after the disaster that has claimed more than 1,000 lives.
Reshma, who emerged almost unscathed, had been trapped in a second floor prayer room and survived by scavenging for dried food in the wreckage around her.
She was discovered after rescuers heard groaning moments before they were due to demolish a concrete slab surrounding the tiny space where she was entombed.
Speaking from her hospital bed in Dhaka, she said: 'It was so bad for me. I never dreamed I'd see the daylight again.' The incredible discovery came as the death toll from the accident, which has become the world's worst industrial accident since the Bhopal disaster in India in 1984, rose above 1,000. There are fears many more bodies are trapped inside.
Reshma, a seamstress, says she survived by eating dried food that was in her area and drinking spare amounts of water with her.
She was discovered on the second floor of the eight-story Rana Plaza building, where crews have been focused on recovering bodies, not rescuing survivors, for much of the past two weeks.
'I heard voices of the rescue workers for the past several days. I kept hitting the wreckage with sticks and rods just to attract their attention,' she told the private Somoy TV from her hospital bed as doctors and nurses milled about, giving her saline and checking her condition.
'No one heard me. It was so bad for me. I never dreamed I'd see the daylight again,' she said.
'There was some dried food around me. I ate the dried food for 15 days.
'The last two days I had nothing but water. I used to drink only a limited quantity of water to save it. I had some bottles of water around me,' she said.
Once Reshma finally got their attention, the crews ordered the cranes and bulldozers to immediately stop work and used handsaws and welding and drilling equipment to cut through the iron rod and debris still trapping her.
They gave her water, oxygen and saline as they worked to free her.
When Reshma was freed after 40 minutes, the crowd erupted in wild cheers.
She was rushed to a military hospital in an ambulance, but her rescuers said she was in shockingly good condition, despite her ordeal.
Abdur Razzak, a warrant officer with the military's engineering department who first spotted her in the wreckage, said she could even walk.
'She was fine, no injuries. She was just trapped. The space was wide,' said Lt. Col. Moyeen, an army official at the scene.
Reshma told her rescuers there were no more survivors in her area. Workers began tearing through the nearby rubble anyway, hoping to find another person alive.
'Reshma told me there were three others with her. They died. She did not see anybody else alive there,' said Maj. Gen. Chowdhury Hasan Suhrawardy, the head of the local military units.
'We will continue our search until a survivor or a dead body is there.'
The woman survived for more than two weeks in temperatures that touched the mid 90s (mid 30s Celsius). She scrounged for whatever food she could find, Suhrawardy said.
Then, when the workers with bulldozers and cranes got close to the area where she was trapped, she took a still pipe and began banging it to attract attention, Razzak said. The workers ran into the dark rubble, eventually getting flashlights, to free her, he said.
Reshma's mother and her sister, Asma, rushed to the hospital to meet her.
Hundreds of people who had been engaged in the grim job of removing decomposing bodies from the site raised their hands together in prayer for her survival.
'Allah, you are the greatest, you can do anything. Please allow us all to rescue the survivor just found,' said a man on a loudspeaker leading the supplicants. 'We seek apology for our sins. Please pardon us, pardon the person found alive.'
Workers at the site had been clearing the rubble since the collapse April 24. More than 2,500 people were rescued in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. However, no survivors had been found in the wreckage since April 28, when Shahin Akter was found amid the wreckage. As workers tried to free her, a fire broke out and she died of smoke inhalation.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, called Reshma in the hospital, and the rescued woman began crying on the phone, Suhrawardy said. She told Hasina: 'I am fine, please pray for me,' he said.
Hasina, whose government has come under criticism for its lax oversight over the powerful garment industry, was racing to the hospital by helicopter to meet her, and congratulated the rescuers, officials said.
'This is an unbelievable feat,' Hasina was quoted as saying by her assistant, Mahbubul Haque Shakil.
The death toll from the accident, which has become the world's worst industrial accident since the Bhopal disaster in India in 1984, has climbed above 1,000 and more bodies might still be trapped inside.
Army officials ordered workers to stop clearing the site with bulldozers and cranes as they tried to free the woman they said might still be alive.
A soldier at the scene said rescuers found a woman in the debris and she waved her hand in response to them.
Rescuers used a handsaw as well as welding and drilling equipment to try to cut through the iron rod and debris trapping her. They asked for a small oxygen cylinder to be brought to the site.
Hundreds of people, who had been engaged in the grim job of removing decomposing bodies from the site, raised their hands together to pray for the woman to be freed alive.
A man on a loudspeaker shouted: 'Allah, you are the greatest, you can do anything. Please allow us all to rescue the survivor just found.'
'We seek apology for our sins. Please pardon us, pardon the person found alive,' he said.
Abdur Razzak, a warrant officer with the military's engineering department who spotted her in the wreckage, said she was OK and could even walk.
Bodies are still being pulled from the rubble of the Rana Plaza complex, and on Friday a spokesman at the army control room coordinating the operation said the number of people confirmed to have been killed had reached 1,038.
The workers there made clothes for familiar High Street brands including Primark and Matalan in the UK, and Spanish label Mango.
A series of deadly incidents at factories have focused global attention on safety standards in Bangladesh's booming garment industry.
Eight people were killed in a fire at a factory this week, which an industry association said on Friday may have been started deliberately.
Roughly 2,500 people were rescued from Rana Plaza, in the industrial suburb of Savar, around 20 miles (30 km) northwest of Dhaka, including many injured, but there is no official estimate of the numbers still missing.
The disaster, believed to have been triggered when generators were started up during a blackout, has put the spotlight on Western retailers who use the impoverished South Asian nation as a source of cheap goods.
Nine people have been arrested in connection with the disaster, including the building's owner and bosses of the factories it housed.
Hundreds of relatives were still gathered at the site, some holding up photographs of family members. Rescue workers have found it increasingly difficult to identify decomposing bodies and are using ID cards found on them or even their mobile phones to do so.
Reshma, who emerged almost unscathed, had been trapped in a second floor prayer room and survived by scavenging for dried food in the wreckage around her.
She was discovered after rescuers heard groaning moments before they were due to demolish a concrete slab surrounding the tiny space where she was entombed.
Speaking from her hospital bed in Dhaka, she said: 'It was so bad for me. I never dreamed I'd see the daylight again.' The incredible discovery came as the death toll from the accident, which has become the world's worst industrial accident since the Bhopal disaster in India in 1984, rose above 1,000. There are fears many more bodies are trapped inside.
Reshma, a seamstress, says she survived by eating dried food that was in her area and drinking spare amounts of water with her.
She was discovered on the second floor of the eight-story Rana Plaza building, where crews have been focused on recovering bodies, not rescuing survivors, for much of the past two weeks.
'I heard voices of the rescue workers for the past several days. I kept hitting the wreckage with sticks and rods just to attract their attention,' she told the private Somoy TV from her hospital bed as doctors and nurses milled about, giving her saline and checking her condition.
'No one heard me. It was so bad for me. I never dreamed I'd see the daylight again,' she said.
'There was some dried food around me. I ate the dried food for 15 days.
'The last two days I had nothing but water. I used to drink only a limited quantity of water to save it. I had some bottles of water around me,' she said.
Once Reshma finally got their attention, the crews ordered the cranes and bulldozers to immediately stop work and used handsaws and welding and drilling equipment to cut through the iron rod and debris still trapping her.
They gave her water, oxygen and saline as they worked to free her.
When Reshma was freed after 40 minutes, the crowd erupted in wild cheers.
She was rushed to a military hospital in an ambulance, but her rescuers said she was in shockingly good condition, despite her ordeal.
Abdur Razzak, a warrant officer with the military's engineering department who first spotted her in the wreckage, said she could even walk.
'She was fine, no injuries. She was just trapped. The space was wide,' said Lt. Col. Moyeen, an army official at the scene.
Reshma told her rescuers there were no more survivors in her area. Workers began tearing through the nearby rubble anyway, hoping to find another person alive.
'Reshma told me there were three others with her. They died. She did not see anybody else alive there,' said Maj. Gen. Chowdhury Hasan Suhrawardy, the head of the local military units.
'We will continue our search until a survivor or a dead body is there.'
The woman survived for more than two weeks in temperatures that touched the mid 90s (mid 30s Celsius). She scrounged for whatever food she could find, Suhrawardy said.
Then, when the workers with bulldozers and cranes got close to the area where she was trapped, she took a still pipe and began banging it to attract attention, Razzak said. The workers ran into the dark rubble, eventually getting flashlights, to free her, he said.
Reshma's mother and her sister, Asma, rushed to the hospital to meet her.
Hundreds of people who had been engaged in the grim job of removing decomposing bodies from the site raised their hands together in prayer for her survival.
'Allah, you are the greatest, you can do anything. Please allow us all to rescue the survivor just found,' said a man on a loudspeaker leading the supplicants. 'We seek apology for our sins. Please pardon us, pardon the person found alive.'
Workers at the site had been clearing the rubble since the collapse April 24. More than 2,500 people were rescued in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. However, no survivors had been found in the wreckage since April 28, when Shahin Akter was found amid the wreckage. As workers tried to free her, a fire broke out and she died of smoke inhalation.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, called Reshma in the hospital, and the rescued woman began crying on the phone, Suhrawardy said. She told Hasina: 'I am fine, please pray for me,' he said.
Hasina, whose government has come under criticism for its lax oversight over the powerful garment industry, was racing to the hospital by helicopter to meet her, and congratulated the rescuers, officials said.
'This is an unbelievable feat,' Hasina was quoted as saying by her assistant, Mahbubul Haque Shakil.
The death toll from the accident, which has become the world's worst industrial accident since the Bhopal disaster in India in 1984, has climbed above 1,000 and more bodies might still be trapped inside.
Army officials ordered workers to stop clearing the site with bulldozers and cranes as they tried to free the woman they said might still be alive.
A soldier at the scene said rescuers found a woman in the debris and she waved her hand in response to them.
Rescuers used a handsaw as well as welding and drilling equipment to try to cut through the iron rod and debris trapping her. They asked for a small oxygen cylinder to be brought to the site.
Hundreds of people, who had been engaged in the grim job of removing decomposing bodies from the site, raised their hands together to pray for the woman to be freed alive.
A man on a loudspeaker shouted: 'Allah, you are the greatest, you can do anything. Please allow us all to rescue the survivor just found.'
'We seek apology for our sins. Please pardon us, pardon the person found alive,' he said.
Abdur Razzak, a warrant officer with the military's engineering department who spotted her in the wreckage, said she was OK and could even walk.
Bodies are still being pulled from the rubble of the Rana Plaza complex, and on Friday a spokesman at the army control room coordinating the operation said the number of people confirmed to have been killed had reached 1,038.
The workers there made clothes for familiar High Street brands including Primark and Matalan in the UK, and Spanish label Mango.
A series of deadly incidents at factories have focused global attention on safety standards in Bangladesh's booming garment industry.
Eight people were killed in a fire at a factory this week, which an industry association said on Friday may have been started deliberately.
Roughly 2,500 people were rescued from Rana Plaza, in the industrial suburb of Savar, around 20 miles (30 km) northwest of Dhaka, including many injured, but there is no official estimate of the numbers still missing.
The disaster, believed to have been triggered when generators were started up during a blackout, has put the spotlight on Western retailers who use the impoverished South Asian nation as a source of cheap goods.
Nine people have been arrested in connection with the disaster, including the building's owner and bosses of the factories it housed.
Hundreds of relatives were still gathered at the site, some holding up photographs of family members. Rescue workers have found it increasingly difficult to identify decomposing bodies and are using ID cards found on them or even their mobile phones to do so.
Source: DailyMail , SkyNews
Comments
Post a Comment