Bangladesh survivor of factory collapse after 17 days in rubble

A Bangladesh survivor has been found after 17 days in rubble. Rescue workers in Bangladesh have freed a woman who was trapped for 17 days in the rubble of a collapsed garment factory. The event has now killed more than 1000 garmet workers.

The woman was found on the second floor of the collapsed eight-story building near Dhaka, Bangladesh. Rescuers carried the woman, a seamstress named Reshma, out of the concrete rubble and twisted steel and rushed her to the hospital in an ambulance.

From her hospital bed, Reshma told reporters that she'd heard the voices of rescue workers and searchers and that she kept hitting the debris with sticks and metal rods in an attempt to get their attention, but nobody came.

Finally, she was able to alert them; cranes and bulldozers were ordered to stop. Rescue crews used handsaws and drilling or welding equipment to break through the debris trapping Reshma. As soon as they could, they gave her water, saline, and oxygen. The rescue took about 40 minutes, and a watching crowd cheered wildly.

"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.

Local media report that, while she was treated for dehydration, her condition was amazingly good. The last survivor was pulled from the rubble 13 days ago. 1,038 bodies have currently been recovered.

The bodies currently being recovered are badly decomposed, which makes identifying them difficult. Brig. Gen. Mohammed Siddiqul Alam Shikder, an army official overseeing the recovery work, said "We are working carefully," he said. "If we get any ID card or mobile phone with them, we can still identify them. Our sincere effort is to at least hand over the bodies to the families."

Bangladesh has now launched an inspection of more than 5,000 garment factories in the country. Over a dozen have been ordered to suspend operations. According to the Wall Street Journal, one of Bangladesh's biggest garment makers - a supplier to Walmart and Sears - has had work suspended at three of its factories.

Wednesday night, a fire in a sweater factory that had closed for the night killed eight people. A November fire at another factory killed 112 people. Bangladesh's garmet industry makes clothes for sale worldwide, but is plagued by corruption. In the case of the collapsed factory, three floors were added illegally, and heavy machines and generators the structure couldn't support were installed throughout the building.

Of the 1,700 people treated at one hospital, the Enam Medical College and Hospital, 75 seriously injured people remain. Many of the survivors, according to the chairman, Enamur Rahhman, had to have amputated limbs and are suffering from trauma-related anxiety and depression.