It was hardly more than a whisper, but Sharmeen Begum recognised the voice as that of her daughter Sumi, who worked at a garment factory in the ill-fated Rana Plaza building outside Dhaka in Bangladesh.
“Ma, I’m on the third floor. Help me,” Sumi croaked, and then the line went dead.
Sumi had been missing since the Rana Plaza collapsed into a heap of rubble on Wednesday, killing at least 213 people and trapping hundreds of others.
Yesterday Ms Begum joined an anxious crowd outside the wreckage, clutching a photograph of her daughter. “My daughter is alive inside,” she said. “She must have gained consciousness somehow and called me. Please save her!”
Deafening bang
Survivors pulled from the masonry described how the eight-storey building collapsed with a deafening bang. One worker said he was pitched downwards as if on a falling lift. Another thought it was an earthquake.
Most of those who emerged alive from the debris had been on the upper floors. Those on the lower levels stood little chance of escape, though miraculously a few got out. Khadija (20), who worked at New Wave Bottoms, was on the second floor of Rana Plaza. Her hands were still swollen and her right leg was bandaged as she recovered at home.
“We did not want to go to work on Wednesday. We went only to find out what the factory owners decided,” she said.
“They told us there was no trouble in the building, that only the plaster had worn off. The production manager threatened us, saying: ‘We will stop all your pay if you do not get to your work.’”
As she went to work at 8.45am, the floor vanished beneath her. “I was caught up under the rubble. It was all dark inside. I had only one hand free. With that I made space to sit and kept praying.
“Everywhere I searched, I only found dead bodies barring one or two alive. At around 2pm I could finally see some light from outside and firefighters in uniform. I screamed out to them and began giving them directions to break in and save me.”
Some survivors managed to crawl out between gaps in stone slabs. Others were stuck.
Pancham Basu (22) was trapped in the rubble for 12 hours. “I worked at the seventh floor of the building. The building collapsed so fast we could not even move. Everyone around me was dead,” he said.
Mr Basu was crying for his father, Probhat, who worked for Phantom Apparels on the third floor. He has not been found. Nor have there been any survivors from the ground floor. The bank there was evacuated; several shops were not.
Cries for help
As the rescue operation continued, cries for help could be heard from deep inside.
Zakir Hossain was freed at 8.30pm on Wednesday, the same time as Mr Basu.
Mr Hossain said his sister-in-law was still trapped inside. “I can hear her voice. But she has still not been rescued,” he said.
The tragedy has focused attention on the low wages paid to Bangladeshi staff, whose cut-price labour allows retailers in the west to clock up large profits. – (Reuters)