"Had the brick not hit me, the falling roof might have killed me," said Ruhul, as he recalled with horror his seven hours inside the rubble, which he thought were his last.

He was working on the sixth floor of the nine-storey building at 12:40am when 'all hell broke loose' on them.

"At first, I did not know what to do when I found myself surrounded by a concrete jungle after the collapse. But I told myself to stay cool and think of a way out. I started to touch the concrete slabs to see if there was a hole," Ruhul told The Daily Star, tears rolling down his cheeks.

Luck was on his side, though, for he found a hole in the wreckage.

"I started crawling but bumped against different blocks only to look again for the hole. And after several hours, I saw light and myself outside the debris." It was minutes to 8:00am Monday.

Ruhul expressed his gratitude to Allah for giving him a fresh lease of life but the near-death experience left him too drained to celebrate his miraculous escape.

"It is simply unbearable... many people are crying at the top of their voice for help but no-one can do anything for them."

"All of us knew our time was running out fast and this made us cry out more loudly to draw the attention of anyone who might be out there to rescue us."

"It was pitch dark inside. You could hear the cry of the trapped ones, many of whom are hanging by their limbs but you will not see them; you will not even see your own skin," he said, standing beside heavy wreckers clearing the debris in a frantic effort to rescue the trapped.

Assistant Boiler Engineer Palash came out of the rubble on his own at 12:25pm yesterday.

He was about to have his dinner and pouring water in a glass Sunday night when he saw dust falling from the eastern wall.

"Before I could realise what was happening, the floor fell on me." He regained his senses about 20 minutes later.

He first thought that he was dying. "Once I was breathing, I figured out that I needed to try to get out of the rubble. It took me 36 hours to see sunlight for the first time since the incident."

"I pushed a blockade and discovered myself outside the wreckage."

Asked whether the building collapsed due to a boiler explosion, he answered in the negative. "I did not hear the sound of an explosion. If it had exploded, the hot water might have hurt me."

Meter mechanic Abdul Halim was fortunate to have fallen into an underground water reservoir as the building came down.

"I felt something hit me and I discovered two others and myself in the water reservoir," Halim said as he showed bruises on the head and knees.

He was preparing to go to bed when the building collapsed.

"The whole building subsided and we were below ground level. Pressure from above sent the water out of the reservoir and we were lying in the empty reservoir."

Heavy motors and other machines were scattered around the reservoir when Halim was searching a way out in the pitch dark.

Three hours after the collapse, Halim saw a moving ray of light. "As I saw the light, I cried at the top of my voice and the rescuers pulled me out."

"I left at least 150 people inside the debris of the ground floor when I came out."