"I was really worried and anxious. I heard noises coming from inside and it sounded like a baby crying," he said.
Eventually, rescue workers were able to partially free the child, cutting a stretch of piping from the third floor with the two-day-old baby cocooned inside.
But there were no celebrations.
"When we took out the pipe the ambulance workers and doctors were already waiting there and I showed them the pipe and asked whether the boy might be able to survive," he said.
"The doctor said: 'Probably not.' I saw his little feet were turning purple and I thought to myself that he wouldn't make it. We almost gave up."
Paramedics rushed the boy – subsequently named Baby 59 after the number of the incubator in which he was treated - to the nearby People's Hospital and began the painstaking task of attempting to extricate his tiny body from the pipe.
Firefighters and doctors cut away the sewage pipe piece by piece (Reuters)
Bit by bit, the child's frame was exposed as firefighters and hospital staff used pliers and a newly bought yellow handsaw to prise open the pipe.
"First we saw the lower half of the baby. Then we started [to cut] again nearer to where the head was. It was such a delicate job. The baby's face was exposed but both of its feet were trapped."
Finally, at 6.20pm, almost two hours after the initial emergency call, the baby was removed from the pipe and placed in incubator 59.
"I felt huge relief and really happy. We had saved this newborn baby's life," said Mr Zheng. "[But] this is our job - this is our responsibility as firefighters.
"He is a really strong-willed baby and he was making noises as if he wanted us to know he was there and that he wanted to survive."
Baby 59 in an incubator at the Jinhua hospital on Wednesday (Reuters)
Baby 59 is now reported to be in a stable condition at a local hospital. Police have said his mother could face an attempted murder charge.
A representative of the Public Security Bureau in Zhejiang's Pujiang county said that the media storm surrounding the case had left the 22-year-old woman in emotional tatters.
"She is currently in quite a dire mental state – after all she is not married – and there has been a bombardment of criticism from the public," he said. "It will not help anyone if the mother becomes so depressed that she ends up committing suicide."
Reports in local media suggest the mother – who has been given the alias Xiao Fei – only realised she was carrying a baby three months into her pregnancy. She subsequently attempted to conceal her pregnancy by using loose-fitting clothes and confronted the baby's father. He rejected her appeals for help, she told police.
With insufficient money for an abortion, the mother told police she had been forced to secretly deliver the baby inside a lavatory in at her home. The baby, she claims, accidentally slipped down the lavatory. Police are not convinced by that version of events.
Police are still looking for the father, who is reported to have refused to acknowledge paternity of the child.
29 May, 2013
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Source: http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNFvzvEsX11w3o2cSnfvtWXb7WbesA&url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/10086884/Baby-59-Chinese-fireman-feared-infant-would-die.html
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