It was a long and harrowing wait for 40-year-old Kamalakar. Employed as a waiter in City Light Hotel, which collapsed early on Monday morning, he survived for 18 long hours under the debris before he was found and rescued at 12.30 am on Tuesday.
Kamalakar was serving tea to the hotel’s customers on the ground floor when the building toppled down. His right hand was trapped under a heavy stone. As the dust settled, he kneeled on the ground and started searching for a way out.
“There was not even a ray of light inside. I could not see anything for so many hours. I kept on screaming in the initial hours, called out names of my fellow mates to find out if anybody was around,” he said.
Luckily, the roof above him did not cave in completely. He tried to get his hand out from under the stone and move forward. “I tried to move away the stone which was on top of my right hand. I was completely helpless,” he said.
In due course he heard the sounds of the rescue operation and screamed to attract attention. But for a long time no one heard him. “In those hours, all I thought was about death,” he said.
Since Kamalakar was trapped on the ground floor, it took rescuers much longer to reach him. Kamalakar says that the anguish he felt during those long hours when he thought he would never be found in time, he will remember all his life.