NZ buggy (and the nanny) saves 7-month-old Abby

Engineers who made a baby-buggy that saved the life of an American infant when part of a building collapsed on it in downtown New York have asked for the crumpled stroller to be returned to New Zealand.

They hope a closer look may give design clues that could be used in future models, says the chief engineer for Tritec Manufacturing of Lower Hutt, Jesse Muru Paenga.

The buggy will then take place of honour among a collection of Mountain Buggy designs dating from the early models that pioneered big-wheeled strollers for robust use in the outdoors, he said.

The stroller, a "double urban" model, folded around Abby Lurensky, aged seven months, when a partly demolished supermarket collapsed on her and a nanny last Thursday, her family said.

The uninjured baby was released from hospital after checks, but her nanny is still there, with a broken arm and broken leg.

Paramedics told the New York Times that the baby initially was unresponsive and turning blue when bystanders dug through a tangle of concrete and steel to free her.

But the child was largely unhurt, thanks to the cover from the shower of debris provided by her New Zealand made stroller and by her nanny, Brunilda Tirado.

The strollers, made of padded fabric stretched over lightweight aluminium frames, ride on 30cm air-filled tyres and sell for about US$600 ($890) in the US.

Alan Jurysta, president of Sycamore Kids of Denver, the American importer of the strollers, is giving the family a new one.

In Lower Hutt, Mr Muru Paenga said he was "over the moon" that the baby had survived.

"That's the number one thing - if it [the stroller] helped to save the baby - that's just great," he said.

The frame of the 16kg urban double stroller is made of a single piece of aluminium alloy, and the design resembles the strong A-frame of a house.

Oren Adler, 34, a financial adviser who was walking by the partly demolished supermarket at West 100th Street when bricks and plaster rained down, said that within seconds, 30 pairs of hands were digging at the pile. They clawed through dust and rubble and cleared away a concrete slab to find an arm sticking out.

The crowd of construction workers and neighbours pulled Ms Tirado free, her arms covered in blood, and kept going. Digging away before emergency workers arrived, they passed the bricks back from hand to hand.

The crowd lifted a steel beam high enough for construction worker Alfredo Ramos to crawl into the wreckage: "The steel beam was about two inches (5cm) from its face. I pulled the baby out," he said.

Abby's parents, Steven and Heidi Lurensky, said Ms Tirado, 56, was a hero. The New York Times reported the incident was extraordinary for all involved, "including that life-saving stroller".

- NZPA