NEWS: 'Incredible heroism'

Speared through the chest, a South African woman refused medical attention until she had helped free her critically injured friend from beneath the rubble of the collapsed Synagogue Church of all Nations, in Lagos, Nigeria.

Another South African woman sat holding her badly injured roommate, stroking her cheek, singing softly to her, as she died, pinned beneath a concrete slab.

Stories of the heartbreaking and heroic efforts of South Africans - many of them severely injured themselves - are emerging days after the collapse of the seven-storey guest house at the church.

As emergency workers continue to sift through tons of rubble in the hope of finding some of the scores of people still unaccounted for, including 17 South Africans, a picture of the first frantic moments after the collapse are emerging.

"What our people did in those moments is indescribable," said South Africa's ambassador to Nigeria, Lulu Mnguni, yesterday.

"The near superhuman effort to lift concrete slabs, provide life-saving treatment ... soothing words as people died ... it is heartbreaking.

"Those who ignored their injuries - many horrific - who refused treatment and stayed at the site are heroes.

"As we speak to the injured, who have lost limbs and suffered immense crush wounds, we are beginning to hear about what their fellow countrymen did to save them.

"We have a woman, speared through the chest by a steel bar. Somehow it missed all of her vital organs and spine. She pulled it out herself.

"The injury was horrific but she refused to leave her friends trapped under the rubble.
"She helped dig them out. Only once they were free did she go to hospital."

Mnguni said the injuries the 29 hospitalised South Africans had sustained were "terrible".

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