Haitian man pulled out alive 11 days after quake

• The rescue operation lasted four hours at a hotel that had been wrecked by temblor

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Sunday

International rescuers yesterday pulled a 24-year-old Haitian man alive from the rubble of a collapsed hotel in the capital Port-au-Prince, 11 days after the earthquake that devastated the city.

He was the latest of more than 130 people who have been pulled out still living from under wrecked buildings by rescue teams from around the world since the January 12 quake.

After a four-hour rescue operation, the Haitian man was carefully extracted from the rubble of the Hotel Napoli Inn in downtown Rue du Centre.

Rescuers said he appeared to be able to move his limbs but was thirsty.

To reach the survivor, two members of French and Greek search-and-rescue teams had crawled into the tangled mass of concrete rubble, wooden beams and corrugated iron that was all that was left of the hotel in downtown Rue du Centre.

They sawed away material to help the trapped man out.

“He was holding the light to help us. He just said ‘Thank You’ when we pulled him out,” Mr Carmen Michalska, a rescuer with the Greek team, told Reuters.

Journalists and onlookers cheered and clapped as the man was carried to an ambulance on a stretcher.

“We have an indication there are more people in there. We are going to go back in,” Mr Michalska said.

French, Greek and US rescuers had earlier located the man, who had been heard tapping and talking under the rubble.

The United Nations said on Saturday the government had declared the post-quake search and rescue phase over, but some operations were still continuing.

Meanwhile, international aid workers looked to speed up relief efforts in Haiti today after criticism that food, water and medicine was not getting to victims 12 days after a devastating earthquake.

Survivors camped out in filthy conditions in about 300 makeshift camps across Haiti’s shattered capital, Port-au-Prince. People complained they were not getting enough aid, despite a huge US-led international relief campaign.

Responding to the criticisms, US Agency for International Development chief Rajiv Shah said his organisation was doing all it could under difficult circumstances.