Reshma Begum, a survivor rescued 17 days after a building collapse in Bangladesh, receives treatment Saturday at a hospital in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh.

SAVAR, Bangladesh — Even amid the euphoria over finding a woman alive in the rubble of a garment factory that collapsed more than two weeks ago, rescuers on Saturday returned to the grim task of dismantling the wreckage and retrieving decomposing bodies, knowing there was little chance of finding any more survivors.

The death toll from Bangladesh’s worst industrial disaster is more than 1,000 and climbing. More than 2,500 people were rescued in the immediate aftermath of the April 24 disaster, but until Friday, crews had gone nearly two weeks without discovering anyone alive.

Then, in the midst of what had become a grim search for decaying bodies following the world’s worst garment industry disaster, rescuers found a woman alive, providing a much-needed boost for the weary workers.

For 17 days, the 19-year-old woman, a seamstress, lay trapped in a dark basement pocket beneath thousands of tons of wreckage as temperatures outside climbed into the mid-90s. She rationed food and water. She banged a pipe to attract attention. She was fast losing hope of ever making it out alive.

In the ruins of the collapsed eight-store garment factory building above her, the frantic rescue operation had long ago ended.

“No one heard me. It was so bad for me. I never dreamed I’d see the daylight again,” the seamstress, Reshma Begum, told Somoy TV from her hospital bed after her astonishing rescue on Friday.

The miraculous moment came when salvage workers finally heard Begum’s banging. They pulled her to safety. She was in surprisingly good condition, wearing a violet outfit with a large, bright pink scarf.

“I heard her say, ‘I am alive, please save me.’ I gave her water. She was OK,” said Miraj Hossain, a volunteer who crawled through the debris to help cut Begum free.

The rescue was broadcast on television across Bangladesh. The prime minister rushed to the hospital, as did the woman’s family to embrace a loved one they thought they’d never again see alive.

On April 24, Begum was working in a factory on the second floor of Rana Plaza when the building began collapsing around her. She said she raced down a stairwell into the basement, where she became trapped near a Muslim prayer room in a wide pocket that allowed her to survive.

Her long hair got stuck under the rubble, but she used sharp objects to cut her hair and free herself, said Maj. Gen. Chowdhury Hasan Suhrawardy.

“There was some dried food around me. I ate the dried food for 15 days. The last two days I had nothing but water. I used to drink only a limited quantity of water to save it. I had some bottles of water around me,” Begum told the television station.