But it was a story with a happy ending when in a second call he told her he had been rescued and taken to hospital, one of the last people to pulled out alive from the wreckage in which at least 66 people were killed and 141 injured.

"Have you seen Tomek Michalski? He has a beard. He was working here," Alicja Michalska had beseeched weary rescuers who emerged from the mangled Hall A of Chorzow's exhibition hall in southern Poland after its roof collapsed Saturday under the weight of heavy snow.

Alicja's husband had climbed a nearby tree, from where he scanned the piercing cold black night, desperate for a glimpse of 30-year-old Tomek, a representative of a specialist birdfood company and an annual visitor to the racing pigeon show in Chorzow.

As soon as his parents heard the news that the roof of Chorzow's exhibition hall had collapsed, they jumped in the family car and raced the 160 kilometers (100 miles) from their home in Wroclaw to Chorzow in Silesia.

Then Alicja received a call on her mobile phone -- from Tomek.

"He's alive! Both legs and one of his shoulders are trapped under metal bars," she told AFP.

"He told me that a young woman died right next to him. He tried to save her life. She was a colleague of his. She had a six-month-old boy," Alicja said before she was overcome by emotion.

Interminable hours went by without more news from her son. Then, late Saturday evening Alicja got another phone call from Tomek.

"He was trapped for five hours in the rubble of the exhibition hall. He called us again when he was in the ambulance, on his way to the hospital. He was among the last people to be rescued, just after 10:00 pm (2100 GMT)," she told AFP on Sunday.

"He was saved! He's in hospital!" she rejoiced.

"He can't feel one of his legs but we hope they will be able to save it. He has to have an operation.

"After they rescued him, they pulled another man out, I think. But after that, it was all over."

From his hospital bed on Sunday, Alicja's son Tomek recounted how he used his mobile phone as a vital link to the outside world.

"I was covered in planks and sheets of metal. I must have made 10 phone calls: to my family, the fire brigade and the police," he said.

When the accident happened, "I heard a noise and pulled the girl who was next to me to try to get her to safety, but she died a few seconds later. I couldn't move my hands but I could sense she was dead," he said.

"At one point, my morale hit rock bottom, but I thought about my wife, my kid and the second one who we're expecting in May," he said. An hour later, rescuers pulled him from his icy metal prison.

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