Quake miracle - Olivia and Abbie's rescue

"I heard nothing for a minute and then all of a sudden there was a little gasp."
The first breath a 6-year-old girl took after being pulled from the rubble of the Christchurch quake was the miraculous sound rescuer Joe Roy had been hoping for.
Former Tauranga resident Olivia Cruickshank, 33, and her daughter Abbie were walking through Cashel Mall, having just got off one bus to board another, when the devastating quake struck last Tuesday.
A falling slab of bricks landed on the pair. A few metres away Mr Roy, 27, was standing on the historic Bridge of Remembrance, talking to his mother on his cellphone when the street crumpled in front of him.
"It was like 9/11, all the dust and paper in the air," he recalls.
An apprentice high-voltage electrician in Christchurch, Mr Roy has to complete first aid training every six months and headed into the destruction to help.
He noticed a group of people gathered around Olivia's legs which were sticking out from beneath a slab of bricks.
"It was like a big piece of the facade of the building, about the size of a two-seater couch," he said.
Mr Roy said a group of about 10 rescuers, some in suits, used a steel rod and piece of wood to pry the the bricks off the pair.
"The rest of us were just sort of heaving it up," he said.
There was panic and adrenalin. "Everyone wanted to get that block off them," he said. "When we were lifting it, it was a huge strain."
"I know when we got the block off them, everyone thought they were both gone because it looked that horrible. I can't get it out (of my head) when I go to sleep at night."
He said the pair were lying next to each other, Olivia with her arm slung over her daughter.
"They were both sort of on the ground next to each other, lying down, but she (Olivia) had her arms over her like she'd tried to get to her and shelter her."
"Olivia is a hero, she was shielding her daughter and took most of the impact of it, you could see that just from being there.
"She's amazing to be where she is now and to have done that," he said.
It wasn't until the slab was lifted that Mr Roy, a father himself, discovered there was a child under it too.
He and another man reached for Abbie first, placing her in a clearing out of the rubble.
"I heard nothing for a minute and then all of a sudden there was a little gasp, it was slow in between each gasp, but we were just like, right let's go."
The other man gathered Abbie in his arms and he and Mr Roy ran with her to nearby Christchurch Hospital where he said staff from the emergency department were still outside the building taking a roll call.
"Apparently we got there at 10 past (1pm) so that's only 20 minutes after it (the earthquake)," he said. "I don't think she could have got there any quicker.
"When I spoke to the dentist (a fellow rescuer) he said that he knew Abbie was under there and he had checked both their vitals.
"He said Abbie still had a pulse but he thought Olivia was dead."
That was the last Mr Roy heard of pair until he read a Bay of Plenty Times article online and realised both Abbie and her mother had survived.
As Mr Roy's friends pack up and leave town and others wait for missing loved ones to come home, he said the news of Olivia and Abbie's survival had been a ray of hope.
"It's amazing, I don't think I'd have got through the last couple of days if they hadn't made it," he said.
Just over a week on from the quake, Olivia's elder brother Rowan Cruickshank said his sister was "fighting really hard" in intensive care at Auckland Hospital.
She has had two operations - one to fuse her neck together and another to wire her jaw.
"She came through both ops and has been awake at times," he said. "She's a hard-working mum, just so caring for other people," he said.
"She's very determined (and) has a nice stubborn streak in her when she wants to," he said.
Meanwhile, his niece, who he described as "very outgoing and hugely adventurous" had been moved from intensive care to a ward at neighbouring Starship Hospital.
"She's talking away, she gets very tired and sleeps a lot of the day," he said.
The family had received fantastic support from Olivia and her partner Tristan (Tex) Walls' colleagues at the Lone Star Cafe head office in Christchurch.
Mr Cruickshank struggled to find the words to describe his family's gratitude towards Mr Roy and his fellow rescuers.
"To us they're super heroes."
OFFERS OF HELP
The Cruickshank family has received a flood of messages from people wishing to donate money to aid the family during their recovery. Donations can be made to The Olivia and Abbie Fund ASB 12-3146-0329558-00