A Few Tales of Survival Emerge in Haiti

(Jan. 14) -- Amid the death and destruction of the worst natural disaster in Haiti's history, scores of incredible survival stories are emerging as rescue crews scour Port-au-Prince for survivors.

After 43 hours buried in the wreckage of her home, Port-au-Prince resident Gladys Louis Jeune was pulled to safety by rescuers, including her ecstatic daughter. Scenes like that were all too rare in the capital, but they kept alive hope that there may be others.

Canada's CTV reports that when the home where Danielle Trapanier, an aid worker from Ontario, had been living collapsed, she fell two stories and landed in a small basement space. She lay there, stunned, for more than 24 hours before being freed by a search team. "When they pulled her out she was bewildered, in shock, with some relatively minor scrapes," Trapanier's employer, Doctors Without Borders, said in a news release.

An 11-year-old Haitian girl survived the tumbling concrete of a house, while those around her were killed. As rescuers tried to dig her out, however, they discovered that her right leg was trapped beneath debris, and feared that it would have to be amputated if she were to be freed. Some might find the video footage disturbing.


But as darkness fell, a saw was used to cut through an iron beam that was keeping her trapped. CNN reports she has been taken to a first-aid center for treatment on her injured leg.

Frank Thorp, an American journalist living in Haiti, was traveling outside Port-au-Prince when the earthquake hit. His wife, Jillian, who was working for a Catholic diocese in the city, was buried when the house where she and her husband lived collapsed. Upon learning that his wife was trapped, Frank Thorp drove through the night to join rescue workers trying to dig her out.

"They could see a little bit of Jillian," the woman's father told The New Haven Register. "Her hand was waving, and she was able to talk to Frank, and he literally lifted her from the mess."


Trapped for two days beneath what had been a five-story building, Tarmo Joveer, a U.N. security officer from Estonia, stood up after being dug from the rubble, raised his fist in the air and walked away almost completely unscathed, CNN reported.

Also on Thursday another U.N. worker, a Filipino soldier named David Catacutan, was pulled from what was left of the Montana Hotel with nothing more than a few bruises. Other U.N. workers remain trapped in the ruins of the hotel, and the government of France says that as many as 200 of its citizens may have also been staying there.