Dhaka, May 11: In a miracle, a 19-year-old girl was on Friday dramatically pulled out from under tonnes of debris on the 17th day of the country's worst ever industrial disaster that has claimed nearly 1,050 lives.
The woman - identified as Reshma - is almost unhurt and undergoing medical check up at the Savar Combined Military Hospital, where Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina talked to her over telephone and inquired about her wellbeing.
"We have safely retrieved her," Bangladesh Army Lt Col Moazzem Hossain told newsmen at the site of the toppled building.
Reshma was miraculously located alive after rescuers heard someone pleading from the debris, "Please rescue me". After being located, she was given food, water and oxygen.
The crowd cheered as Reshma, wearing a purple dress, was brought out from the ruins.
"It's an unprecedented incident," Hasina said while congratulating the rescuers. Later, she visited Reshma at the hospital and assured her of all supports for treatment and rehabilitation.
Reshma, a mother of a girl child, was working as a swing operator in one of the five garment factories housed at the eight-storey Rana Plaza that collapsed on April 24.
The death toll in the disaster crossed the 1,000 mark today with more bodies being retrieved and stands at 1,043. A total of 2,444 people have been rescued alive so far.
"The woman signalled us by hitting an iron rod on the rubble as we approached the basement (of the ruined structure)," a fire service official told newsmen.
The military official who retrieved her said after the detection of a "living object", rescuers tried to locate her using torchlight and found her in the basement where the official along with an army major penetrated through a hole.
"I told her, mother don't be afraid, we are here to rescue you... We would you like to drink water," Moazzem said.
The dehydrated woman was immediately given saline water and biscuits as rescuers pulled the frail-looking woman, he said. The last survivor was rescued on the sixth day after the collapse.
Meanwhile, Reshma told her survivors that the dry food and water thrown in scattered manner inside the collapsed building during first few days of the salvage campaign kept alive.
"I ate biscuits and water... But the stock dwindled two days ago," rescuers quoted her as saying while she was being retrieved from the under the ruins.
But talking to doctors at the military hospital, Reshma said she suffered from severe thrust for the past two days in the hot and humid atmosphere as she passed days in dark in between the sandwiched floors of the ruined building.
Nutrition and psychiatric experts, however, said the food and water were not enough and Reshma's mental strength must have a big role in keeping her alive with no major apparent physical damage.
"It was dark inside and she was alone in the ruins with no confirmed hope that rescuers could retrieve her alive... It is a severe mental pressure," said Dr M S I Mullick, the chairman of the Psychiatry department at Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical College.
Dr M Aminul Haque Bhuyan, the Director of Institute of Nutrition and Food Science of Dhaka University, said Reshma survived as she perhaps had exhausted the stock slowly thinking she may need the water and food for for a longer period.
He added that in general, people can survive for two to eight weeks without food, depending on stored body fat and muscle mass but "one can survive without water for as high as four days".
"Stable mental condition is one of the reasons of her survival. It is her strong will force, which kept her strong and did not make her nervous," he said.
