Bangladesh woman rescued after 17 days under rubble

Cries of “Save me” drew rescuers Friday to Reshma Begum, who had been under the rubble of a factory building that collapsed April 24.
Cries of “Save me” drew rescuers Friday to Reshma Begum, who had been under the rubble of a factory building that collapsed April 24.

DHAKA, Bangladesh - A woman trapped for 17 days beneath the rubble of a collapsed building on the outskirts of Dhaka was discovered alive Friday and then rushed to a nearby military hospital after rescuers pulled her free.

photo

AP

Reshma Begum is carried from the wreckage of the factory building that collapsed in Savar, Bangladesh. She told Somoy TV, “I never dreamed I’d see the daylight again.”

The woman, Reshma Begum, had been in the basement of the building. Rescuers, speaking live on national television from the wreckage site in Savar, said they were clearing debris Friday afternoon when they saw a pipe moving. It turned out to be Begum, shaking the pipe from below, trying to gain attention.

“Save me!” rescuers said they heard her shouting.

The discovery lightened what had been an especially gloomy day in the recovery effort as the death toll pushed past 1,000 victims, with officials confirming that 1,045 bodies had been recovered.

More than 3,000 people were believed to be working at five clothing factories in the building, Rana Plaza, when it collapsed on the morning of April 24. The building owner and eight other people, including the owners of the garment factories, have been detained.

Begum’s rescue was broadcast on television across Bangladesh. She was wearing a violet outfit with a large, bright pink scarf as she was removed from the rubble.

“No one heard me. It was so bad for me. I never dreamed I’d see the daylight again,” Begum told Somoy TV from her hospital bed after her rescue.

One of her rescuers, Lt. Col. Moazzem, told Bangladesh’s state news agency that he and another soldier discovered Begum after cutting a hole to the basement.

“I told her, ‘Mother, don’t be afraid, we are here to rescue you,’” said Moazzem, according to the agency. “Would you like a drink of water?”

On April 24, Begum was working in a factory on the second floor of Rana Plaza when the building began collapsing around her. She said she raced down a stairwell into the basement, where she became trapped near a Muslim prayer room in a wide pocket that allowed her to survive.

Her long hair got stuck under the rubble, but she used sharp objects to cut her hair and free herself, said Maj. Gen. Chowdhury Hasan Suhrawardy, the head of the local military units in charge of the disaster site.

“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,” Begum told the television station.

Days earlier, rescuers had given up hope of finding more survivors and had started using heavy machinery to more quickly clear debris from the site. Before Friday, the last person found alive in the wreckage was thought to have been a woman named Shaheena; rescuers spent more than 20 hours April 28 trying to save Shaheena before a fire broke out, killing her. The authorities have said more than 2,000 people were rescued or escaped on their own.

Ali Ahmed Khan, director general of the Bangladesh Fire Service said work crews would “for the time being” suspend the use of heavy machinery and resume rescue searches in the remaining rubble.

“We are very delighted,” said Khan, noting that rescuers had taken pains to work carefully in case someone was still alive. “The army and fire service has been working very, very cautiously.”

But Begum told her rescuers there were no more survivors in her area.

“Reshma told me there were three others with her. They died. She did not see anybody else alive there,” said Suhrawardy. The bodies were eventually recovered from another section of the building not far from Begum, he said.

Begum said she had heard the work crews clearing the site before they eventually approached the section where she was trapped.

“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,” Begum said.

She finally got the crews’ attention when she took a steel pipe and began banging it, said Abdur Razzak, a warrant officer with the military’s engineering department who first spotted her in the wreckage.

The rescue crews could not believe there might be a survivor. “But within minutes, we were sure that there was someone,” Razzak said.

The workers ran into the dark rubble, eventually getting flashlights, to free her,he said.

They ordered the cranes and bulldozers to stop immediately 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.

Hundreds of people engaged in removing bodies from the site in recent days raised their hands together in prayer for her survival.

“God, 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.”

Soldiers and men in hard hats carried Begum on a stretcher to a waiting ambulance, which brought her to a military hospital. Her rescuers said she was in good condition, despite her ordeal. Razzak 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 who uses only one name.

Doctors at the hospital told Bangladeshi television that Begum was out of danger and that her kidneys and liver were functioning fine.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina called Begum 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, raced to the hospital by helicopter to meet her and congratulated the rescuers, officials said.

“This is an unbelievable feat,” Hasina was quoted as saying through her assistant, Mahbubul Haque Shakil.

The woman’s family also raced to the military hospital where she is being treated.

Begum’s sister, Asma, said she and her mother had kept a vigil for the seamstress, who is from the rural Dinajpur district, 170 miles north of Dhaka. She said they had been losing hope amid the endless string of grim days, when scores of bodies and no survivors were removed from the rubble.

“We got her back just when we had lost all our hope to find her alive,” she told Somoy TV. “God is so merciful.” Information for this article was contributed by Julfikar Ali Manik and Jim Yardley of The New York Times and by Julhas Alam of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 05/11/2013

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