A NEWBORN boy rescued from a sewage pipe in a Chinese apartment building is the latest in a string of great escape stories that have made international headlines.

2013: FLUSHED DOWN A TOILET

THE newborn boy was rescued from a sewerage pipe in a Chinese apartment building after being flushed down a toilet.

Residents in Jinhua, in the province of Zhejiang, called firefighters after hearing the two-day-old baby crying in the fourth-floor lavatory.

Attempts to pull him out failed, so rescuers sawed away a section of the 10cm wide pipe with the baby inside.

Firefighters and doctors spent almost an hour taking the tube apart, piece by piece, and finally recovered the newborn. The baby's placenta was still attached.

The baby was reportedly stuck in the tube for about two hours.

The 2.3kg boy suffered some cuts to his face and limbs. His heart rate was low and he was put in an incubator after the ordeal.

2013: BANGLADESH FACTORY COLLAPSE



A WOMAN was rescued from the rubble of a garment factory building in Bangladesh, 17 days after it collapsed, killing more than 1000 people.

Emergency crews pulled Reshma Begum, a seamstress who was working on the third floor of the factory, from piles of debris.

The disaster occurred in an industrial zone near Dhaka.

It is considered one of the world's worst industrial accidents.

About 3000 workers were in the building at the time of the collapse.

2010: CHILEAN MINE CAVE-IN



A CAVE-IN at Chile's San Jose gold and copper mine near Copiapo trapped a team of Chilean miners almost 700m below the surface.

After nearly 70 days underground, the men were individually winched to the surface through tiny tunnels in a custom-built pod.

Initially they were thought to have all perished, but after two weeks of silence, a note gave Chile the miraculous news that the miners were still alive.

"All 33 of us are well inside the shelter," said the note, written by the oldest of the miners, 63-year-old Mario Gomez, and carried to the surface by a drill bit.

2006: BEACONSFIELD

AFTER two weeks trapped inside the rubble of a collapsed shaft in Tasmania's Beaconsfield mine, the nation held its breath as Todd Russell and Brant Webb walked out of the lift and clocked off.

The miners were working almost a kilometre underground when a small earthquake triggered a tunnel collapse.

The two men fought desperately to stay alive in a small steel cage that had survived the mine collapse.

Crushed together in a space smaller than a child's cubby house, with water streaming from the rocks surrounding them, there wasn't enough room for both to lie flat at the same time.

Beaconsfield miner Larry Knight was killed.

2003: HIS ARM OR HIS LIFE

ARON Ralston amputated his arm after it became pinned under a boulder in a remote Utah canyon.

Avid outdoorsman Mr Ralston, 27, spent five days trapped in the metre-wide canyon near Canyonlands National Park. Mr Ralston became pinned as he scrambled over three boulders wedged into a narrow canyon.

One of the boulders, weighing an estimated 360kg, rolled as he climbed over it and his right arm was trapped against a cliff face.

He tried chipping away with a knife at the boulder and the cliff, and tried to rig a way to lift the boulder off himself with climbing gear. But it was to no avail.

He decided to sacrifice his arm to save his life after going through most of his three litres of water and his food.

Using his pocketknife, he took an hour to amputate his arm below the elbow. He then rappelled to the canyon floor, hiked downstream and was spotted by a helicopter.

His story was made into a Hollywood movie: 127 Hours.

2001: SEPTEMBER 11 SURVIVOR

DURING the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre, only four people above the 78th floor of the south tower survived.

Brian Clark was one of them.

He and the others survived by heading down stairs through smoke and debris.

The smoky stairwell was lit only by Mr Clark's flashlight. Mr Clark was executive vice president at Euro Brokers.

The four survivors, plus about 10 people in the south tower's 78th floor elevator lobby, are the only survivors known to have escaped from the floors above the jet crashes.

1997: STUART DIVER

THE only survivor of the Thredbo landslide.

His wife, Sally, and 17 other people died in the disaster but he was rescued after 65 hours trapped under 2000 tonnes of rubble.

The victims of the tragedy were killed when two ski lodges were crushed by the landslide at the popular ski resort in southern NSW, just before midnight on July 30, 1997.

Mr Diver was freed from the ruins after being trapped beneath the rubble.

When he was pulled free, Mr Diver, a ski instructor, was suffering severe hypothermia, had damaged limbs and poor circulation.

After the incident, he wrote a biography, Survival, detailing his struggles in coming to terms with tragedy.

1992: 43 DAYS IN THE COLD

AUSTRALIAN medical student James Scott, 22, survived 43 cold days with only a sleeping bag and two chocolate bars after being hit by a blizzard while trekking in Nepal.

Mr Scott lived off melted snow, one caterpillar and the now famous two chocolate bars.

Many had given up on Mr Scott. The Brisbane student lost one third of his body weight and reportedly passed the time recalling happy memories and the technical details of his sporting hobby: Karate.

1972: PLANE CRASH MIRACLE

A URUGUAYAN rugby team on a plane that crashed in the Andes mountains in 1972 came under the world's spotlight 72 days later.

Sixteen people were plucked from a freezing escarpment and later told their extraordinary - and bizarre - story of survival.

They revealed they had managed to stay alive by feeding off their dead friends' bodies.

The crash killed 29 people. The ordeal inspired the survival novel and film Alive.