Interviewer: What happened to you that night?
Phung Thi Tiem: It was around 10 p.m.
Phung Thi Tiem: The alert siren sounded.
Phung Thi Tiem: I rushed my thirteen-year-old son and my husband to the shelter.
Phung Thi Tiem: As we were nearing the shelter, I heard some rumbling noise above me.
Phung Thi Tiem: Then bombs fell down from the sky and we were knocked into the shelter.
Phung Thi Tiem: It was around 10 pm.
Phung Thi Tiem: I was supposed to evacuate from the city, but I decided not to.
Phung Thi Tiem: My husband and I and our thirteen years old son were at home.
Phung Thi Tiem: My son had come home to pick up some rice.
Phung Thi Tiem: As soon as we heard the alert siren, we also heard a rumbling noise above us.
Phung Thi Tiem: We rushed to the bomb shelter, but the bombs fell down as we were on our way.
Phung Thi Tiem: We got thrown into the bomb shelter.
Phung Thi Tiem: I lost consciousness.
Phung Thi Tiem: When I regained my senses and climbed out of the bomb shelter, the entire area was smoke filled.
Phung Thi Tiem: I then took my husband and my son out of the bombed out area.
Phung Thi Tiem: As soon as this was done, I returned to area again with a whistle, a flashlight and a red band in my hands.
Phung Thi Tiem: From under the rubble and from inside the shelters I heard people screaming for help.
Phung Thi Tiem: Heaps of bricks and concrete were now covering the tops of the shelters.
Phung Thi Tiem: I called on other people to help me pull the victims out of the shelters.
Phung Thi Tiem: Some people recovered right away, but others were slow to regain their consciousness and still others were wounded.
Phung Thi Tiem: We stopped the passing cars and threw these wounded people into these cars to take them to the hospitals for emergency treatment.
Phung Thi Tiem: The next day, the day after that and five or six days thereafter, we still that to work continually to get to the people inside the bomb shelters.
Phung Thi Tiem: During the first night, we had to use pickforks, shovels, hoes, and crowbars to pry loose the brick walls and the concrete slabs that had fallen down on top of the shelters.
Phung Thi Tiem: But we could not get down too far working with our hands like that.
Phung Thi Tiem: The next day the government sent over cranes to lift the large beams so that the bodies underneath could be pulled out.
Phung Thi Tiem: Coffins were then brought to the scene to put the bodies into.
Phung Thi Tiem: For days after that we still had to dig into the rubble to pull out the corpses.
Interviewer: Could you describe to us the most moving scene for you that night?
Phung Thi Tiem: The most heart rending sight was the scene at the Son Quan alleyway.
Phung Thi Tiem: A whole family of seven, husband and wife and five children were killed.
Phung Thi Tiem: The oldest child was twenty and the youngest two years of age.
Phung Thi Tiem: The whole family was wiped out.
Phung Thi Tiem: It was an extremely painful thing to see.
Phung Thi Tiem: The ground on which their house was located is still an empty lot of land now.
Phung Thi Tiem: It was extremely painful.
Phung Thi Tiem: What an outrage! A family of seven completely wiped out.
Phung Thi Tiem: Their house was completely razed.
Phung Thi Tiem: Not a single item was left intact.
Phung Thi Tiem: The whole thing was flattened to the ground.
Phung Thi Tiem: It was a most painful sight.