Bangladeshi Woman Rescued After 17 Days: How People Survive Disasters

Reshma was trapped in a wide Muslim prayer room located in the basement of the eight-story Rana Plaza building that housed five garment factories and thousands of workers in Bangladesh.

There are of course no rules that predict who survives a disaster such as a fire or an earthquake. And there are no guidelines that guarantee escape when the walls and the world come crashing down, as they did around Reshma when the garment factory where she worked collapsed.

Having the open space for oxygen is likely one of the reasons Reshma survived the tragedy. Over 1,100 other Bangladeshi people were not so fortunate.

Reshma has yet to recount how she lived for 17 days among the wreckage, and while such experiences are rare, remarkable stories of survival are not impossible. Following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, Port Authority officers Sergeant John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno were trapped 30 ft. beneath the rubble for hours. McLoughlin waited 22 hours before being dug out and Jimeno waited for 13.

In 2010, a 7.0 earthquake near the town of Léogâne in Haiti devastated the country. Evans Monsignac, a father of two, was the last person to be rescued alive from the debris in the capital of Port-au-Prince after 27 days without food and water. “I still don’t understand how I’m here,” Monsignac told the Telegraph during his recovery in the Tampa General Hospital in Florida. “I was resigned to death. But God gave me life. The fact that I’m alive today isn’t because of me, it’s because of the grace of God. It’s a miracle, I can’t explain it.” Similar survivors were discovered among the rubble in the 2008 earthquake in China’s Sichuan province, including an eight-months-pregnant woman who was rescued after 50 hours under debris.

Surviving for extended periods of time amid wreckage is the result of a mixture of good fortune, health and drive. “Ultimately it is related to an individual’s pre-injury status,” says Dr. Robert Glatter, an emergency medicine physician at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. “It comes down to their physical ability to withstand the strain. When you are trapped in such a building collapse, there is practically no available oxygen, and pre-injury medical status matters. Some people have survived a few weeks.”

Being in relatively good physical health before the emergency can be a game changer for survival — specifically, says Glatter, a strong liver and kidneys. The liver breaks down glycogen, which is the stored form of glucose that your brain and heart need to survive. “If your liver is functioning, you have a glycogen supply of one day to sustain you. The body then turns to fats and fatty acids for energy over the next several days. After three to four days, the body starts breaking down muscle to amino acids to produce energy,” he says. “That’s why it is unusual for people to survive beyond that. They survive often by breaking down muscle. You break your body down for energy.”