Ali Ismail / Hotel New World

The obstacle isn't always what it looks like. Sometimes you can remove it — one page at a time.

If you grew up in Singapore, you know the name Hotel New World.

March 15, 1986. A six-storey building at Serangoon Road just came down. No earthquake. No bomb. The engineers had forgotten to calculate the building's own weight.

33 people died. 17 were pulled out alive.

Here's a story from that rubble I only learned recently.

Jerina Tan was 19. A hotel receptionist on the third floor. Her words: "It's really too fast loh. You just drop down. You don't know whether it's real life, or you're dreaming. All is blackout."

She woke up in darkness. Right leg pinned by a plank and a stack of Yellow Pages. Left leg pinned by a dead body.

Ali Ismail was 26. A firefighter from Central Fire Station. He knocked a hole in a collapsed wall and dragged himself through on his stomach. Concrete dust. Darkness. The smell of a building that had just died.

Four hours to free her left leg.

Seven hours in, the medical officer made the call. Amputate. The leg was too deeply trapped. He taught Ali how to cut it off — gave him the tools, the instructions, everything.

Most people would have done what the doctor said. The expert had spoken. Amputation was the safe answer.

Ali asked for 30 more minutes. Then 15 more.

Here's what he saw that the doctor didn't. The thing trapping her wasn't concrete or steel. It was a stack of Yellow Pages wedged against a plank. Paper.

So he started tearing out pages. One-handed. His other arm bracing his body in the rubble. Exhausted after seven hours of crawling, digging, pulling. Ripping out page after page after page.

He freed her. She was the first of 17 survivors pulled from that wreckage.

They never spoke again. Ali didn't know her name. Jerina didn't know his.

For 30 years, both searched. In 2016, Yahoo Singapore tracked them down and arranged a meeting at Jerina's flat in Hougang. They'd been living a few bus stops apart for three years.

Ali sat on her couch, and the 30 years just came undone. He told her: "The doctor taught me how to amputate your leg, you know. But I thought I could save your leg."

Jerina, weeping: "Thank you very much. Without you, I will not be here today."

The doctor saw a problem that required a drastic solution. Ali, lying in the rubble with his hands on the obstacle, saw Yellow Pages.

The difference between amputation and freedom was 15 minutes of someone refusing to accept the obvious answer. Tearing out pages, one by one, in the dark.

What's a problem everyone around you assumes is immovable — but might actually be paper?