Firemen make headlines for rescuing newborn from toilet

News of an abandoned newborn's rescue by firefighters from a toilet in northwest China's Shaanxi Province is making headlines in China.

Li Zhi, a firefighter, received a call on Monday that a baby girl was found at a public toilet in Suide County of Yulin City. About three minutes later, seven firefighters arrived at the site.

A newborn baby was found lying on her stomach in critical condition in the latrine of the men's bathroom. One of the firemen, the thinnest on the team, jumped into the pit toilet and pulled the baby out.

"It seemed that she had just been born. Beside the little girl was a placenta and umbilical cord," said Li, who took off his coat and wrapped the baby in it.

It was a freezing winter day, and the firefighters could not wait for the ambulance to arrive. The baby stopped crying, and Li could feel she had a low body temperature, so he took her to the hospital in the firetruck.

Though it was only a short distance, Li and the other firemen felt like it was the longest journey they had ever taken.

Police video footage from the truck shows Li Zhi's voice growing hoarse from shouting, "All cars get out of the way!" nearly 100 times.

"Don't fall asleep. Hold on, please," he repeated to the baby over and over.

It only took three minutes and 44 seconds to reach the hospital from the toilet where the baby was found.

Thanks to the timely rescue, the baby girl was saved. The emergency department of Number One Hospital of Yulin City cleaned her and cut her umbilical cord. She was put into an incubator after being injected with antibiotics, said Lei Donghong, a doctor with the hospital.

The video was later released by the official account of the provincial fire department on Sina Weibo on Wednesday, prompting nationwide discussion.

"I was moved to tears. I feel proud of the firemen and shameful for the baby's parents. They will be punished," wrote a Weibo user named Natasha.

It is not the first time for an abandoned newborn to make the news in China. In 2013, an unmarried mother named Chen Li gave birth to a baby girl in a toilet in Shenzhen City. She worried that she could not raise her, and threw the baby out of the window. The baby later died.

Li Zhi and the other firefighters went to visit the baby every day. They gave her a name, "Xiaoxiao." "Xiao" is the first word in the word Xiaofangyuan, meaning "firefighter" in Mandarin.

Xiaoxiao is now drinking milk and sometimes stretches her arms or kicks her legs as she lies in her incubator.

The 28-year-old Li Zhi wants to adopt Xiaoxiao, but he is not qualified according to adoption laws, which require adoptive parents to be at least 30 years old.

In addition to Li, many other people have called the local civil affairs bureau to say they want to adopt the abandoned baby.

However, Xiaoxiao's popularity worries Li Zhi. "I don't want people to pay too much attention to her. I hope she can live on and lead a happy life without being affected by the fact that she was abandoned by her parents," Li said.