The French Search and Rescue team pulled a miracle today.
Another miracle that only the French can pull out of the rubble.
Over and over again. Well Done.
Vive la France.
A teenage girl Darlene Etienne is alive today out of the rubble that Haiti is – Thanks – to the French team’s dogged pursuit of survivors in the rubble…
The French fire fighters were ebullient and pulled out Darlene alive and very dehydrated, with a broken left leg and moments from death from the rubble of her home near the destroyed University, this Thursday.
This rescue is a stunning recovery more than two weeks after the earthquake that devastated the city and certainly almost a week from when the Haitian government gave up on the rescue effort and asked the rescue teams to give up…
Darlene Etienne was rushed to a French military field hospital and then to the French military hospital ship Sirroco, with an oxygen mask and her eyes open, looking afar in a lost stare…
“She’s alive!” said paramedic Paul Valette, who accompanied her into the hospital.
Haitian authorities say it is rare for anyone to survive more than 72 hours without water, let alone more than two weeks. But Etienne may have had some access to water from a bathroom of the collapsed home, and rescuers said she mumbled something about it in the rubble.
Her family said Etienne, 17, had just started studying when the disaster struck, trapping dozens of students and staff in the rubble of school buildings, hostels and nearby homes.
“We thought she was dead,” her cousin, Jocelyn A. St. Jules, said in a telephone call with The Associated Press.
Then — half a month after the earthquake — neighbors on Wednesday heard a voice weakly calling from the rubble of a private home down the road from the collapsed university. They called a crowdsourcing mobile number, who communicated the rescue potential and that brought in the French civil response team.
Rescuer Claude Fuilla then walked along the dangerously crumbled roof, heard her voice and saw a little bit of dust-covered black hair in the rubble. Clearing away some debris, he managed to reach the young woman and see she was barely alive — just so.
“She couldn’t really talk to us or say how long she’d been there but I think she’d been there since the earthquake. I don’t think she could have survived even a few more hours,” Fuilla said.
Digging out a hole big enough to give her oxygen and water, they found she had a very weak pulse. Within 45 minutes they managed to remove her, covered in dust. Fuilla said she was rescued from what appeared to be the porch area of the house, but a neighbor said he believed it was the shower room, where she might have had access to water.
“It’s exceptional. She spoke to us in a very little voice, she was extremely weak,” Fuilla said. “Before we stabilized her she was extremely dehydrated and weak she had a very low blood pressure.”
Another rescuer, French Lt. Col. Christophe Renou, said he had no idea how she had managed to cling to life for so long: “Definitely she’s been here for 15 days. She wasn’t hurt but she was very, very weak.”
Renou said his team would probably return Thursday with radar equipment to look for any other possible survivors.
French Ambassador Didier le Bret praised the persistence of the French rescue team, which has kept looking for survivors for days after the Haitian government officially called off the search.
“They are so stubborn because they should not have been working anymore because, officially, the rescue phase is over. But they felt that some lives still are to be saved, so we did not say that they should leave the country,” he told Associated Press Television News.
“To be honest we thought that the last miracle we had a couple of days ago … would be the last miracle because the chances are so very, very slight. But it seems that beyond the miracle, there was another miracle.”
The last previous confirmed rescue of someone trapped by the initial quake occurred Saturday, 11 days after the quake, when the French rescuers again, extricated a man from the ruins of a hotel.
You gotta give it to the French – Save for their personal hygiene choices and their preoccupation with strange sexual practices – they are great.
Maybe they can smell the people alive in Haiti and then they go after them…
They have a heightened sense of smell.
Their olfactory senses are extremely strong.
That explains why they don’t like to bathe more often than once every couple of months.
They are afraid of the sky falling in.
Much like their ancient ancestors…. the Gauls,
They are deathly afraid of earthquakes.
Just in case they are trapped in the rubble they must smell…
Only then they will be easy to find…
That strong BO and the overwhelming perfume will lead the rescuers… to them.
You must admit the Descartian logic is impeccable.
Unfortunately that also leads the members of the opposite sex….
Away -
thus explaining the giant population decreases taking place in France…
All fun aside.
Cheers for the French.
Yours,
Pano
PS:
Finally the Haitians are getting a dose of optimism.
That is the real good news this rescue represents…
Haiti is alive again…
