Haiti: Miracle rescue

If a deadline had passed for rescue operations to cease, Wismond Exantus wasn't aware of it.

Not long after the United Nations announced that the Haitian Government had declared a formal end to searches for the living under the rubble, he was unearthed from a hotel grocery store. One of his brothers helped to get a Greek search team to the site after hearing Exantus' voice.

The shop assistant was in good condition despite surviving 11 days since the earthquake crumbled Haiti's capital.

Dozens of onlookers wearing masks against the stench of the city's decaying bodies cheered when Exantus, clad in a black T-shirt and black pants, was carried from a narrow tunnel on a stretcher and placed in an ambulance. He braced one arm with the other.

"I was hungry," Exantus said from his hospital bed soon after the rescue. "But every night I thought about the revelation that I would survive."

Exantus, who is in his 20s, said he survived initially by diving under a desk when the rubble started to fall around him. Trapped in such a small space, he had to lie on his back the entire time and survived by drinking cola, beer and biscuits.

"I would eat anything I found. After the quake I didn't know when it was day and when it was night."

One of his brothers, Jean Elit Jean Pierre, said Exantus worked as a cashier in the grocery store on the ground floor of the Hotel Napoli.

From his hospital bed, Exantus turned to his family and said, "When you are in a hole I will try to reach out to you, too."

Lieutenant Colonel Christophe Renou, a French Civil Protection official who was part of the rescue team at the site, said rescuers used chainsaws, heavy duty drills and handsaws to dig a narrow tunnel to Exantus and got him water while working to extract him. Renou said the man was buried under 5m of debris, mostly wood and concrete.

The rescue teams sent two women into the tunnel because only they could fit. Carmen Michalska, a Scottish woman who is a member of the Greek team, found Exantus wedged between shelving and debris, and a French female rescuer used a saw to cut away the last bit of debris.

When Exantus emerged "he was smiling and he was just really happy to get out", Michalska said. "He said, 'Thank you."'

Renou speculated that the man survived because the building was mostly wooden, which created some air spaces. He was not sure if anyone else was trapped in the collapsed store and the team was using radar to check the rubble for signs of life.

"What happened in that spot there is a miracle," Renou said. "We are really happy he is alive."

Experts say the chance of saving trapped people begins diminishing after 72 hours.

Haiti's "heartbreaking" decision to end search and rescue operations was taken after a young man and an elderly woman were pulled out alive after spending 10 days buried in debris.

"Hope is vanishing now, though we could still have miracles," said Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman for the UN office for the co-ordination of humanitarian affairs. "The Government has declared the search and rescue operations over."

Some rescue teams had packed up and left even before the official end although some were carrying on.

Byrs said: "In cases where there is the slightest sign of life, they will act."

Some critics have complained that rescue efforts diverted resources that could have saved more lives if they had been used to treat the injured, estimated to number 250,000.

But Fernando Alvarez Bravo, a representative for rescue crews founded during the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, said rescue efforts gave the rest of the population the assurance they had not been abandoned.

About 130 people were pulled alive from beneath collapsed buildings by international teams, including two on Saturday.

An 84-year-old woman, dehydrated, injured and almost skeletal, was found in her home. Doctors who treated her with intravenous fluids and drugs said she was in a critical condition.

Emmanuel Boso, 21, emerged in better shape after an Israeli team pulled him from the ruins of his home. From his hospital bed, he described stepping out from the shower when the earthquake hit. Furniture collapsed around him, creating a nook.

The studentsaid he passed out in the rubble and dreamed he could hear his mother crying. He had no food and drank his own urine. "I am here today because God wants it."

Aftershocks have continued to jolt the city daily, keeping most people outdoors even at night.

An exodus from the capital has gathered pace in recent days as people abandon squalid, makeshift camps that have begun reporting diarrhoea and other hygiene-related ailments.

Up to 200,000 people, according to USAid, have packed into boats and buses to other towns and rural areas that are dirt-poor and lack infrastructure, but are undamaged. The UN estimates up to one million, a third of the city's population, could eventually leave.

The Government has outlined plans to erect 11 tent cities to accommodate 400,000 people.

- OBSERVER, AP