Tale of survival: 69 hours under debris

At 7:15 pm on March 7, which was meant to be his last night in quarantine, You was playing a game on a laptop computer his girlfriend had loaned him to ease the boredom.

Then he felt the building shake slightly and heard the sound of glass being crushed.

"The game had just started, but the distressing noise drew me to the window to check what was going on," he said.

"Suddenly I heard a juddering sound and spun around to get away from the window, which wasn't a safe place to hide."

The building collapsed in just two seconds as he ran toward the bed, the biggest and closest possible shelter he could see. Before he could get under it, he was buried in the ruins.

His duties as a safety engineer include inspecting fire risks near warehouses and potential mechanical hazards in factories, and that safety awareness came in handy in an emergency.

"I remembered the safe evacuation map of the hotel, and checked the room window and the external unit of the air conditioner to make sure of the safe route for escaping a fire," You said.

"What I didn't expect was that the collapse was quicker than a fire or earthquake and happened in just one or two seconds."

Though he didn't spot the flaws hidden in the structure of the illegally built hotel while in quarantine, his earlier safety training framed his response to the collapse－save energy, stay optimistic, and wait for rescue.

"People normally tend to cry or even get desperate in such a dark environment," he said. "We might not hold on for long due to excessive fear."

After adjusting into a relatively comfortable position in a small space, similar to the one under an SUV, he slept for a while to preserve his strength. When he woke up he could hear an excavator working and other survivors calling for help.

Failing to find anything to eat or drink in the darkness, You counted the days and nights by feeling the temperature and listening to the sounds of rescue machines.

"I was stuck under a big piece of metal," he said.

"The only hope of finding water was to dig out the rubble around my body to see if any bottles were there, which at the same time made more room for me to lie down. But I didn't find any food or water."

You's biggest enemy was thirst, which he tried to relieve by sniffing a piece of bedsheet dipped in his urine to increase the humidity.

"I struggled with the thought of drinking the urine but remembered a video saying that could lead to dehydration," he told Beijing News.

You had a dream within a dream, in which he was pulled out of the wreckage but no one saw him.

"I realized it was a dream, so I pinched my wounds to wake up from the pain," he said. "But actually I was still in a dream and I heard a voice in my mind saying I'd died at the moment of the collapse and everything that happened later was in my imagination."

You said he felt grateful when he finally woke up alive.

To kill time in the darkness, he tried to evoke happy childhood memories, like catching fish with friends. "I didn't even dare to think of my family as the pity of not seeing them again would have definitely made me cry," he said.

You joked that he regretted not wearing something red, as his parents had suggested, to bring good luck in the Year of the Rat, his Chinese zodiac animal.

During their desperate wait, You interacted with other people trapped nearby as they supported each other with simple words. He cheered up a neighboring girl, urging her to hold on and wait for the rescuers. "I also heard a girl crying for help to attract the firefighters' attention," he said. "Those surrounding me were rescued one by one, leaving me depressed and buried at the bottom."

The remote control for the air conditioner, which he found in the debris, became his last hope before he was rescued, allowing him to get a rough idea of his surroundings from the dim light of the screen.

You said rescue workers couldn't hear his voice or detect signs of life due to the thick metal above him. He kept hitting the metal with rocks when the rescuers were near, and was finally found and pulled to safety. "I had the strength to walk when I got out," he said. "The firefighter just held me up and lifted me to the stretcher, and I was sent to the hospital at once."

At the hospital, You was diagnosed as having a spinal fracture. He was treated there for nearly a week and then sent to a community medical center for a month's bed rest to recover.

His family returned to their hometown in Wenzhou, comforted by his stable prognosis following their anxious wait for his rescue.

You's girlfriend, a colleague in Quanzhou, regularly visits him at the medical center.

"I plan to bring her to meet my parents when the epidemic is over and I totally recover," he said, adding that he used to feel stressed by the pressure to get married but his recent near-death experience had left him with nothing to fear.

You and 21 other survivors formed a group on the WeChat social media platform to stay in touch.

"We are now fellow sufferers and I will remember the date Mar 7 my whole life," one survivor said in a post on the chat group.

On March 20, another wrote, "We can arrange a gathering after we are all discharged from the hospital, after all we share the same birthday!"

Other people in the group echoed that sentiment.

They are organizing a reunion near Quanzhou's Nanhuan Road, where the hotel stood.

"We will wait for your recovery," those still in hospital were told.

An investigation of the hotel's collapse found its construction was never approved and it was built illegally.

"But so far we haven't heard any follow-up results of the investigation or details of compensation. Survivors in the WeChat group often express concern about this, worrying the silence means they may end up with nothing," You said, stressing he was most concerned about ensuring compensation for the families of the 29 people who died in the collapse.