Rescue
After the collapse, many passers-by began to try pulling out survivors. They were soon joined by the Singapore Fire Service, the Police Task Force of the Singapore Police Force and the Singapore Armed Forces. A nearby business, Eagle Piano Company, became a center for the rescue operation.
As there were survivors buried in the rubble, the rescue was a delicate operation. Debris was carefully removed as power saws and drills cut through the rubble.
Sound detectors were used to locate survivors beneath the slabs by picking up faint moans and cries. In the first 12 hours, 9 people were rescued. At one time, LTC Lim Meng Kin, Chief Medical Officer, and several other SAF doctors and two Ministry of Health doctors took turns and crawled through narrow spaces inside the rubble in an effort to provide assistance to trapped survivors, giving glucose and saline drips to them.
Tunneling experts from Britain, Ireland, and Japan, led by Tony Gallagher who were involved in the construction of the Mass Rapid Transit joined in the effort and helped rescue an additional eight survivors.
After the seven-day rescue operation, 17 people were rescued, but 33 people lost their lives. The last survivor, Chua Kim Choo, 30, was rescued on 18 March 1986, having survived after hiding beneath a table.
Read more about this topic: Hotel New World Disaster
Famous quotes containing the word rescue:
“The personal touch between the people and the man to whom they temporarily delegated power of course conduces to a better understanding between them. Moreover, I ought not to omit to mention as a useful result of my journeying that I am to visit a great many expositions and fairs, and that the curiosity to see the President will certainly increase the box receipts and tend to rescue many commendable enterprises from financial disaster.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“To rescue our children we will have to let them save us from the power we embody: we will have to trust the very difference that they forever personify. And we will have to allow them the choice, without fear of death: that they may come and do likewise or that they may come and that we will follow them, that a little child will lead us back to the child we will always be, vulnerable and wanting and hurting for love and for beauty.”
—June Jordan (b. 1939)
“Whether your child is 3 or 13, don’t rush in to rescue him until you know he’s done all he can to rescue himself.”
—Barbara F. Meltz (20th century)