SW China landslide kills five, injures three

Five people were killed and three others injured in a landslide that hit an expressway construction site in southwest China's Guizhou Province early Sunday morning, local authorities said.

The landslide happened at around 5 a.m. in Gaoniang township, Tianzhu County, where a makeshift dormitory of China Railway No. 2 Engineering Group Co., Ltd collapsed, burying eight construction workers.

As of Sunday noon, rescuers had retrieved five bodies, and the three injured had been sent to a nearby hospital, sources with the county's publicity department said.

An initial investigation showed that recent rainfall was to blame for the landslide.

A further investigation into the cause of the accident is underway.

Sunday 12 May 2013

http://english.cri.cn/6909/2013/05/12/3123s764521.htm

continue reading

Lunch boxes of the dead key to survival in factory hell

Bangladeshi officials have given the first account of how a "miracle" survivor pulled from a collapsed building managed to emerge alive 17 days after the disaster, and hailed her indomitable spirit.

Reshma Begum, 18, a seamstress who was dug out from rubble of the garment factory on Friday, drank rainwater and had found lunch boxes of co-workers "from which she got some food", Major General Chowdhury Hassan Suhrawardy said.

"She has made history. She is an example not only for Bangladesh but also for the world," General Suhrawardy said as the death toll from the impoverished nation's worst industrial accident hit 1110 yesterday.

The painfully thin woman, who TV footage showed smiling shyly from her hospital intensive-care bed, had been "trapped in a place spacious enough for her to crawl comfortably", said General Suhrawardy, who has headed the giant relief effort.

Ms Begum was wearing a fresh dress when she was rescued, taken from a box of clothes she found, and had cut her hair with a pair of scissors "because it is so hot under the rubble", he said. But "she still can't sleep well. She gets frightened every now and then and the nurse has to hold her hand to comfort her".

Colonel Azizur Rahman, who leads the medical team looking after Ms Begum, said she had suffered "some metabolical changes" due to malnutrition and her kidney function level dropped to 40 per cent.

"She is improving," and was now eating rice and semi-solid food, he added.

Rescuers found her after long abandoning hope of locating more survivors. They were stunned to hear a woman's voice calling for help.

She was freed in a 45-minute operation aired live on television and watched by crowds at the scene.

"We first saw a pipe moving. We removed some gravel and concrete. We found her standing," said Major Moazzem, who goes by one name.

"She told us: 'My name is Reshma, please save me, please save me, brother'," Jamil Ahmed, another rescuer, recounted.

She later told Somoy TV in an interview: "I called but nobody heard me. I heard noises, but nobody listened to me."

Her family, from a remote northern village, called her survival a miracle. "We had lost all hope of finding her alive. We visited every hospital . . . the mortuaries and checked every body," said her brother, Zahidul Islam.

General Suhrawardy said the search for bodies would continue until the last missing person was accounted for.

Sunday 12 May 2013

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/lunch-boxes-of-the-dead-key-to-survival-in-factory-hell/story-e6frg6so-1226640661587

continue reading

Rana Plaza death toll now at 1,126

Officials say 1,126 dead bodies have so far been pulled out of the wreckage of the ill-fated Rana Plaza which collapsed on Apr 24.

The death toll is being updated by a temporary control room run by the district administration at the local Adhar Chandra High School in Savar, close to the collapsed highrise.

Until now, 826 dead bodies have been handed over to their relatives, control room officials said.

Bodies recovered from the wreckage are taken to the school grounds for identification.

At the moment, fourteen bodies are still there waiting to be identified.

Another 52 unidentified bodies are still at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital morgue.

So far, 234 unclaimed bodies have been buried at the Jurain graveyard in the capital.

Their DNA samples have been collected for future identification.

The nine-story Rana Plaza caved in on Apr 24 morning with thousands trapped inside. Most of them were women workers employed in the five readymade garment factories operating from the Rana Plaza.

One such women worker Reshma Akter was pulled out alive from the rubble seventeen days after the collapse in what appeared to be a near-miracle.

Rescuers have nearly finished clearing the rubble on the front side of the building.

From May 7 night they started to clear the wreckage at the back of the building.

Most of the bodies recovered now are decomposed beyond recognition. Rescuers are trying to identify them from the mobile phones or identity cards if found on them.

Leading the rescue operation is General Officer Commanding (GOC) of Bangladesh Army's 9th Infantry Division Major General Chowdhury Hasan Suhrawardy.

At a press conference on May 1, he had claimed that only 149 were missing. But over the past 10 days 688 bodies had been pulled out from the wreckage.

The rescuers are still pulling out bodies from the wreckage.

Those survived the collapse, claimed that more than 5,500 people worked in the shops and factories in the ill-fated Rana Plaza.

Sunday 12 May 2013

http://bdnews24.com/bangladesh/2013/05/12/rana-plaza-death-toll-now-at-1126

continue reading