Miracle survivor of Bangladesh collapse lost track of day and night in rubble
Rescued seamstress, likely last survivor of Dhaka factory building collapse, couldn't tell if it was day or night as she clung to life in rubble
On April 24, Reshma Begum was working in a factory on the second floor of Rana Plaza when the building began collapsing around her. She raced down a stairwell into the basement, where she became trapped near a Muslim prayer room in a wide space that allowed her to survive.
"At some point I fell asleep but suddenly I woke up and it was difficult to know whether it was day or night," Begum was quoted as saying by Major Moazzem Hossain, who was involved in the rescue on Friday.
Her long hair got stuck under the rubble, but she used sharp objects to cut her hair and free herself, according to Major General Chowdhury Hasan Suhrawardy, the head of the local military units in charge of the disaster site.
For 17 days, the woman, a seamstress, lay trapped in a dark space in the basement beneath thousands of tonnes of wreckage as temperatures outside climbed into the mid-30s Celsius. She rationed food and water. She banged a pipe to attract attention. But she was fast losing hope of ever making it out alive.
In the ruins of the collapsed eight-storey garment factory building, the frantic rescue operation had long ago ended.
Hours before Begum was found, emergency crews had pulled the 1,000th corpse from the heap of rubble, twisted metal and machinery.
