Miracles do happen:Reshma's remarkable story.

 

 

Rescuers in Bangladesh have found a survivor in the rubble of a clothing factory that collapsed 17 days ago.

Bangladeshi television channels broadcast live footage of emergency service workers pulling the woman out from the debris, as onlookers burst into cheers.
The woman, called Reshma, was discovered on the second floor of the eight-storey Rana Plaza building in the capital Dhaka, where crews had been focusing 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 a TV company from her hospital bed.
  "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.
She was discovered in the wreckage of a Muslim prayer room in the building and army officials immediately ordered the cranes and bulldozers to stop work.
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, using handsaws to cut through the rubble, as hundreds of people who had been engaged in the grim job of removing decomposing bodies from the site, raised their hands together in prayer.

 

Sky's Foreign Affairs Correspondent Lisa Holland said: "What's really remarkable about the story ... is that the authorities had said that they were going to call off the search for survivors at the end of today and send the bulldozers in as from tomorrow.
"So, with the clock against them, they heard the remarkable cries for help of this woman who somehow had become trapped between a fallen beam and a column and that somehow gave her some sort of pocketed protection and enabled her to survive for 17 days."
More than 2,500 people have been rescued in the immediate aftermath of the collapse. However, the death toll has now risen to more than 1,000.
The collapse is already the world's deadliest garment industry disaster and one of the worst industrial accidents.
The disaster has raised alarm about the often deadly working conditions in Bangladesh's $20bn (£13bn) garment industry, which provides clothing for major retailers around the globe.