"I just felt a range of mixed emotions. I was sad, frantic, crying. Then my husband messaged me to confirm the news, she told Al Jazeera. I called my friend in Sidoarjo and told her to go to the school and find him, and that I was on my way. Dewi arrived at about 5.30pm, about two hours after the school collapsed during afternoon prayers. Her son, Haikal, had not been found."
"There were six Haikals' on the lists and I went to every hospital trying to find out if my son was there, Dewi said. Then someone sent me a video from the scene and I could hear a voice shouting, Mama, mama, mama,' and I thought, Thank God, that's him, he's calling for me', she said. From then on, I focused on the scene of the collapse. I just knew he was in there, and I told the search and rescue teams that he needed to be rescued."
A boarding school in Sidoarjo, East Java, collapsed during afternoon prayers, burying mainly male students aged 12 to 18 beneath heavy rubble. Families rushed to hospitals and the collapse site as search-and-rescue teams pinned names of rescued children to notice boards and collected DNA from relatives to aid identification. Dewi Ajeng searched multiple hospitals after her 13-year-old son, Selendra Haikal Rakaditya, could not be located and received a video capturing a child's cries of 'Mama'. Rescuers found an air pocket holding Haikal and five other pupils; access was obstructed by jagged gaps and a blocked escape route.
Read at www.aljazeera.com
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