“I never dreamed I’d see the daylight again,” Reshma Begum told local Somoy TV from her hospital room, where she was taken after being pulled out of debris in front of a crowd in Dhaka that chanted “Allah is great!”When Rana Plaza, a huge block of garment factories, caved in on April 24, the seamstress was trapped in a room on the second floor, with three dead colleagues. She survived by rummaging through their bags for supplies.“There was some dried food around me,” she said. “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.”As the workers, who had not pulled anyone out alive since April 28, and had been operating with bulldozers, got closer, she summoned her remaining strength.“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.”Luckily, she was heard, and the machinery was immediately stopped. Rescuers then spent 40 minutes trying to extract Begum safely, and passed her water and saline.“Allah, you are the greatest, you can do anything. Please allow us all to rescue the survivor just found. We seek apology for our sins. Please pardon us, pardon the person found alive,” said a man with a loudspeaker in front of the gathering crowd at the scene.Police said Begum was not injured because she was trapped in a “wide space”, and is already healthy enough to walk.The miraculous rescue has been seized on by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who was criticized for not enforcing the safety regulations that would have prevented the collapse of the Rana Plaza, the latest in a string of garment factory accidents in Bangladesh, which earns $20 billion a year from the industry.Hasina immediately called Begum, who broke down in tears and repeated the words “Please pray for me.” The prime minister later took a helicopter to meet the survivor in person.Around 1,050 people have been recovered from the accident site, with more than 100 presumed missing, and likely dead. Workers have removed more than half of the 7,000 tons of debris from the ruins of the building.While Begum’s survival for 17 days under the rubble is unusual, it is not a world record. After the 2005 Pakistan earthquake, Naqsha Bibi was imprisoned in a tiny space within the remains of her kitchen, and survived for 63 days by eating decomposing food before being found by her family. … Read More
Urals ghost plane: Wreckage found year after crash, 11 dead bodies
Aleksandr Scryabin and Sergey Kuznetsov came across the aircraft’s debris 8km from the town of Serov in the Sverdlovsk Region late on Saturday, May 4. According to Scryabin, the tail was distinguishable in the wreckage of the plane, the double wings, the flashing lights – blue and red, and a pile of human remains – skulls and bones. ”At first, they took the strange structure in the swamp for the collapsed power line pylon and set up a camp nearby, but when they approached it they understood that it was, in fact, the missing plane,” the statement by the regional Interior Ministry said. The representatives of the Emergencies Ministry, the police and the investigative committee are currently working on the scene of the accident. Despite the crash site being relatively close to Serov, it’s situated in a hard-to-reach area, which is accessible only by caterpillar vehicle. The officials have confirmed that the model of the crashed aircraft is An-2, reporting at least 11 skeletonized bodies found in the wreckage. The rescuers say the helicopter will most likely be needed to remove the debris of the plane from the swamp. There were at least 12 people on board the plane when it fell into the swamp. According to the police, the relatives of the deceased have begun to arrive at the crash site in the woods. The An-2 plane went missing on June 11, 2012 soon after lift off from the airfield in Serov. The aircraft was used for fire-prevention monitoring of the taiga (boreal forest), but it was on an unsanctioned flight when the tragedy occurred. Reports in the media claimed the pilot was organizing aerial excursions for civilians in order to earn some extra cash. The search for the plane went on for nearly six months by air and on foot and was aborted only in the middle of November. The operation expanded outside the Sverdlovsk Region as the rescuers had explored nearly 1 million sq km of the forest in the neighboring Chelyabinsk, Kurgan, Tyumen Regions and Khanty-Mansi autonomous district, but their efforts were fruitless.”Any reproaches towards the search party that they weren’t checking the woods thoroughly enough are groundless. The plane crashed into a swamp and it was hard to find it even for the hunters, who know the taiga very well,” the statement by the Sverdlovsk Interior Ministry’s department added. The An-2, which is also known by the nickname ‘Kukuruznik’ (maize farmworker) in Russia, is a single-engine biplane designed in the USSR in 1946 to be used as a utility or agricultural aircraft. The plane, which can carry two crew members and 12 passengers, was produced until 2002. Four hundred and eleven hull-loss accidents involving An-2s have been registered so far, with 391 human lives lost in them. … Read More
Urals ghost plane: Wreckage found year after crash, 11 dead bodies (GRAPHIC PHOTOS)
Aleksandr Scryabin and Sergey Kuznetsov came across the aircraft’s debris 8km from the town of Serov in the Sverdlovsk Region late on Saturday, May 4. According to Scryabin, the tail was distinguishable in the wreckage of the plane, the double wings, the flashing lights – blue and red, and a pile of human remains – skulls and bones. ”At first, they took the strange structure in the swamp for the collapsed power line pylon and set up a camp nearby, but when they approached it they understood that it was, in fact, the missing plane,” the statement by the regional Interior Ministry said. The representatives of the Emergencies Ministry, the police and the investigative committee are currently working on the scene of the accident. Despite the crash site being relatively close to Serov, it’s situated in a hard-to-reach area, which is accessible only by caterpillar vehicle. The officials have confirmed that the model of the crashed aircraft is An-2, reporting at least 11 skeletonized bodies found in the wreckage. The rescuers say the helicopter will most likely be needed to remove the debris of the plane from the swamp. There were at least 12 people on board the plane when it fell into the swamp. According to the police, the relatives of the deceased have begun to arrive at the crash site in the woods. The An-2 plane went missing on June 11, 2012 soon after lift off from the airfield in Serov. The aircraft was used for fire-prevention monitoring of the taiga (boreal forest), but it was on an unsanctioned flight when the tragedy occurred. Reports in the media claimed the pilot was organizing aerial excursions for civilians in order to earn some extra cash. The search for the plane went on for nearly six months by air and on foot and was aborted only in the middle of November. The operation expanded outside the Sverdlovsk Region as the rescuers had explored nearly 1 million sq km of the forest in the neighboring Chelyabinsk, Kurgan, Tyumen Regions and Khanty-Mansi autonomous district, but their efforts were fruitless.”Any reproaches towards the search party that they weren’t checking the woods thoroughly enough are groundless. The plane crashed into a swamp and it was hard to find it even for the hunters, who know the taiga very well,” the statement by the Sverdlovsk Interior Ministry’s department added. The An-2, which is also known by the nickname ‘Kukuruznik’ (maize farmworker) in Russia, is a single-engine biplane designed in the USSR in 1946 to be used as a utility or agricultural aircraft. The plane, which can carry two crew members and 12 passengers, was produced until 2002. Four hundred and eleven hull-loss accidents involving An-2s have been registered so far, with 391 human lives lost in them. … Read More
Hezbollah: Drone’s not ours
BEIRUT (AP) — The militant Lebanese Hezbollah group has denied sending a drone that was shot down by Israel.The group’s Al Manar TV made the announcement Thursday through a one line statement flashed as an urgent news bar on its screen.An Israeli warplane shot down a drone approaching the country coast from Lebanon, smashing its wreckage into the sea off the northern city of Haifa Thursday.Suspicion immediately fell on Hezbollah, which sent a similar drone in October and vowed to send more.Continue Reading… … Read More
Death toll in Texas fertilizer plant explosion rises to 14
The tiny Texas town of West continues to struggle to come to terms with the Wednesday fire and explosion at a local fertilizer plant. According to the Associated Press, recovery workers have now pulled 14 bodies from the wreckage, ten of whom were first responders who had rushed to the scene of the…
Bodies of 12 people recovered from fertilizer plant, say officials
Officials said Friday that the bodies of 12 people have been recovered from the wreckage of a fertilizer plant that caught fire and exploded in the town of West, Texas on Wednesday. According to the Associated Press, about 200 other people were injured in the blast, which took place Wednesday…
45 killed as building collapses in India (PHOTOS)
Rescue workers searched the debris for possible survivors at the site in the Mumbai suburb of Thane. “There may be [a] possibility people have been trapped inside right now,” said the local police commissioner K.P. Raghuvanshi said on Friday, who added 15 people have already been saved from the wreckage.The building had four floors completed, serving as either residences or offices. Four more stories were under construction. According to police, between 100 and 150 people were in the building at the time of the tragedy.As of Friday afternoon, over 20 people remained missing, while three floors of the construction are yet to be searched.“All the three floors are sandwiched … so it’s very difficult for us,” said R.S. Rajesh, an official with the National Disaster Response Force, as cited by AP.The injured – many of whom had fractures, head wounds and spinal injuries – were taken to the nearby hospital. Its officials said they tried to find the parents of a 10-month-old girl who was rescued, but did not succeed.The building did not have clearance from local authorities to be built, according to police, who are searching for the builders to arrest them.”The inquiry is ongoing. We are all busy with the rescue operation; our priority now is to rescue as many as possible,” Raghuvanshi said.The reasons for the collapse of the building are not yet clear. But incidents of this kind are not rare in India, where builders often care more for cutting construction expenses than for the security and quality of the work being done. … Read More
