Monday, January 25, 2010

Moment rescuers reached Haiti survivor buried under grocer's shop for 11 days

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Media are shown around the hospital quarters onboard the French transport and hosptial ship Siroco, anchored off Port-au-Prince
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The Siroco is carrying 2,000 tons of humanitarian aid and heavy equipment for earthquake recovery efforts


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The Military Sealift Command hospital ship USNS Comfort (T-AH 20) and the guided-missile frigate USS Underwood (FFG 36) are seen operating off the coast of Killick, Haiti


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A Haitian police officer tries to keep people back as they push forward to receive food being given out by the Yele Haiti foundation for those displaced by the massive earthquake

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Haiti police officer chase a group of desperate people away from a warehouse in Port-au-Prince



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Looters drive away on a street in Port-au-Prince. Police in the Haitian capital counted their losses and gathered their forces, preparing for a surge in crime



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Buried alive: Joy on the face of Wismond Exantus, 22, as rescuers make contact to end his 11-day nightmare, stuck in a narrow niche of space after the shop he worked in collapsed in the Haiti earthquake

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Entombed: Wismond survived by eating cookies and drinking beer and cola that he found around him - he was weak from hunger when pulled out but alive


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Reaching for freedom: Rescue workers toss Exantus a heavy glove so that he begin to dig himself out


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Plea: Orestro Oclore, four, who lost his hand in the earthquake and has been refused food prior to another operation, pleads for nourishment at the general hospital in Port-au-Prince

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Wismond Exantus speaks to his brother Jean-Pierre Jeaneli at a French field hospital in Port-au-Prince

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Desperate: Haitians crowd around a United Nations unit as food is delivered




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Devastation: The ruins of the grocery from where a rescue team rescued Wismond Exantus



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Members of the emergency services help Wismond out of the ruins of a grocers shop


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He could barely move, crushed into a tomb-like space beneath the rubble of the Haitian earthquake.

For 11 days, 24-year-old Wismond Exantus existed in a nightmare. Buried alive, he survived on beer, biscuits and Coke, and banged desperately on the broken walls that weighed down on him to get someone's attention.

He did not know if anyone would ever hear. He prayed, recited psalms, and slept.

On Sunday - hours after authorities called off the search for survivors in Haiti - a journalist heard Wismond's pleas for help.



Rescuers including Carmen Michalska from Britain, rushed in to action - and with Wismond's help managed to pull the shocked man from the rubble. He was weak from hunger - but he was alive.
Ms Michalska, who is 5ft 5in, was small enough to squeeze down a tiny hole to reach Wismond.

Moments after she emerged from the wreckage she described her amazement at being able to save somebody's life.

These videograbs show the moment the outside world was able to make contact with Wismond.

'When we got here we started pulling away the rubble with our hands and tools we found in the street,' the 36-year-old from Sheffield told the Daily Telegraph.

'People were saying "There's someone alive down there" and we were saying "Are you sure? Are you sure?"

'We got communication from him and then, when the heavy equipment turned up, they made a gap but it wasn't very wide.'

Ms Michalska, who works in security, said it was a 'tight squeeze and rather smelly and claustrophobic' as she crawled through the rubble.

'When we got down to the bottom I could see his head behind a piece of wood. He smiled and was so happy to see us.'

'He held our light for us while we sawed the wood in front of him away. I couldn't talk to him because I don't speak French but he said "Merci".'

Onlookers cheered as Ms Michalska and a fellow rescuer from France pulled Wismond free.

Speaking from his cot in a French field hospital Wismond said the first thing he wanted to do was find a church to give thanks.

He had been working as a shop clerk in the grocery store of the four-storey Napoli Inn hotel in Port-au-Prince when the earthquake struck. He dove under a desk, and thanked God for the feeble supplies of food and drink around that he could reach.

'I wasn't afraid because I knew they were searching and would come for me,' he said.

'I would eat and drink anything I found - beer, cookies, cola. I drank Coca-Cola every day and ate some tiny little things.

'After the quake I didn't know when it was day and when it was night.

'It was God who was tucking me away in his arms. It gave me strength.'

Wismond still had beer and biscuits in his pockets when he was discovered.

His family said they heard tapping from the ruins for several days but could not persuade the authorities to go to the scene.

The shop clerk was only saved after a Greek journalist heard the faint taps and alerted rescue workers.

Wismond may be the last of the survivors to be pulled from the rubble.

Haiti's government now estimates 150,000 bodies have been collected and buried in Port-au-Prince alone since the massive earthquake struck nearly two weeks ago.

With thousands still unaccounted for, the final death toll is expected to be more than 200,000. That doesn't count those still under the debris, carried off by relatives or killed in the outlying quake zone.

Although Wismond is the third person to be found alive in the past two days, officials say they have given up hope of finding anyone else alive.

However, with his escape prompting fears that there are others still slowly dying beneath the rubble, many rescue crews are ignoring the decision.

Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Renou, who found Wismond, said: 'Life doesn't stop when the government says stop. There is still hope, but it is going to take some luck and God's help.'

Most of the victims have now been buried anonymously in mass graves on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince or burned in the streets.

British firemen returning home over the weekend paid tribute to the bravery of the Haitian people. Among the four they rescued was a two-year-old girl called Mia.

Arriving back at Manchester Airport, operations commander Pete Stevenson, 48, said: 'They were so glad to see the rescuers. The people were crying when we left.

'We plan to keep in touch with Mia. She was in fine health. It was a humbling experience.'

Meanwhile, one of the world's most respected disaster officials has branded the Haiti quake-relief effort a 'pathetic' failure and criticised the militarised approach of the U.S. as ineffective and out of touch.

Guido Bertolaso, Italy's civil protection chief, said that what was needed was a single international civilian coordinator to take charge.

He also called on individual countries and aid agencies to stop flying their flags and posing for TV cameras and get to work.

Bertolaso, who won praise for his handling of Italy's 2009 quake in Abruzzo, said: 'Unfortunately there's this need to make a 'bella figura' before the TV cameras rather than focus on what's under the debris.'

In particular, he criticised what he called the well-meaning but ineffective U.S.-run military operation.

There are more than 2,000 American troops on the ground, helping to deliver humanitarian aid.
US. officials have defended their presence and dismissed such criticism, which has most vocally been leveled by leftist Latin American leaders.

The US presence and willingness to send in a floating hospital, cargo planes, troops and aid was 'commendable' and absolutely necessary, Bertolaso told Italy's RAI state television from Port-au-Prince.

Unfortunately it's a massive presence, but it's not been used in the best way,' he said, criticising the fact that American military officers were running a civilian relief operation.

Citing the botched U.S. response to Hurricane Katrina, he said the Americans 'tend to confuse military with what should be an emergency intervention that cannot be given over solely to the armed forces. We're missing a leader, a coordination capacity that goes beyond military discipline.'

'It's a truly powerful show of force, but it's completely out of touch with reality,' Bertolaso said.

'They don't have close rapport with the territory, they certainly don't have a rapport with the international organisations and aid groups,' leading everyone do their own thing without any coordination.

Speaking to RAI, Bertolaso said the United Nations and powerful countries need to craft international procedures to follow when such catastrophes occur.

'I think it has truly been a pathetic situation,' Bertolaso said. 'It could have been run a lot better, and instead of being the first time that the world came together to do something good, it's instead been the latest time that the world has done it this way.'

He said there was widespread consensus on the ground among relief officials that the effort to date had shown the 'failure' of the international community that also was evident in the South Asian tsunami emergency.

'No one came here with the idea of running the emergency,' he said. 'They came here thinking this was just a humanitarian catastrophe ... so they came with the idea of bringing them a bit to eat, some water, and the problem is resolved.

'This is the great contradiction,' he said.




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