Port-au-Prince, January 16: For 48 frantic hours his parents had searched for their two-year-old son, digging with their bare hands among the twisted rubble of their collapsed home.
They could hear his increasingly weak cries but simply could not shift the mangled concrete and metal that had trapped him somewhere below.
Yesterday, however, came the joyous moment they had feared they would never see after the massive earthquake that struck Haiti on Tuesday, killing up to 50,000.
Rescue workers, burrowing deep into the rubble, head torches picking out their route, edged their way successfully towards little Redjeson Claude.
He was then passed along a human chain, his head scarred by dried blood and his face covered in minor wounds.
He looked bewildered – until the moment he saw his mother Daphnee. Then, his eyes lit up and his face creased into a smile as she reached forward to cuddle him.
For the international rescue teams operating in the heart of the broken Haiti capital Port-au-Prince, it was a moment of relief and achievement as they worked, often in wreckage containing bodies, in a race against time to find those still alive.
At least 55 people had been rescued alive in the city by nightfall but aid agencies said that voices, including those of children, could still be heard calling from the debris.
In one school, rescuers found two girls and a boy alive, while in a crumpled tower block they discovered a 60-year-old man, who had been in his fifth floor apartment when the earthquake, measuring seven on the Richter scale, hit.
At the city’s Hotel Montana, Spanish rescue teams pulled 65-year-old Sarlah Chand, a doctor, alive from the debris where she had been buried for more than 50 hours, fearing she would die where she lay. Remarkably, she had no broken bones.
The hotel had ‘folded’ in seconds and she had plunged several feet before coming to rest in an area where plenty of air was able to flow through.
Sitting up eating a biscuit while medics checked her, she said she had been trapped with five others and had been talking with them up until moment of rescue. All five were subsequently pulled clear, including an American.
Rezene Tesfamariam, Haiti director of charity Plan International, said people were using their bare hands or basic tools such as shovels or pick-axes to try to reach loved ones.
He said: ‘There are people still alive underneath the rubble, you can hear them crying for help, but time is running out.
‘It is beyond the means of individuals to reach them. They are trying to move concrete with their hands. What is desperately needed is proper machinery and equipment to lift the rubble.’
Mr Tesfamariam, who lost his own home in the quake, added: ‘I have seen refugees fleeing war and cyclones hitting villages, but in those cases at least you have time to run away. In just a few seconds so many lives were wiped out. Port-au-Prince looks like it has been bombed.
‘I went back to my house and a neighbour called my name. She said there were children under the rubble. I shouted to them and they called back.
Desperate Haitians pleaded with international authorities yesterday to do more to get emergency aid to those who need it.
Governments across the world are pouring relief supplies and medical teams into the Caribbean state – already the poorest in the Western Hemisphere.
But the sheer scale of the destruction and logistical problems in distributing supplies has meant hundreds of thousands in the capital Port-au-Prince are without food, water or shelter.
The earthquake badly damaged the city’s seaport, allowing only limited use, while its airport has been forced to turn away aid planes because of a lack of space and fuel.
Relief workers have also been unable to reach the most badly affected by truck because of debris on roads that were already inadequate before the quake hit.
In two areas of the capital, groups of survivors stacked rotting corpses across main roads to protest about the lack of aid.
One man begged: ‘We need food, water, doctors, medicine. We need it now – tomorrow is too late – we are thirsty now.’
However, hopes were raised last night after hundreds of U.S. troops – part of a 5,500-strong force promised by President Obama – arrived in Haiti.
British search and rescue teams with sniffer dogs and heavy lifting equipment have also touched down, and spent much of yesterday combing the wreckage for survivors.
But many Haitians – facing their fourth night of sleeping in the open air – are growing angry and desperate.
Looters roamed downtown streets armed with machetes while others salvaged goods, including scraps of food, scavenged from the rubble.
Michel Legros, 53, who was searching for several relatives under the concrete of his collapsed home, said: ‘They are scavenging everything.’
Ann Barnes
Jean Reynol, 37, a petrol station attendant, said that he feared it would not be long before the anger turned to violence.
‘We’re worried that people will get a little uneasy,’ he added. ‘People have not been eating or drinking for almost 50 hours and are already in a very poor situation.’
Charity worker Fevil Dubien said fights had broken out over water he distributed from a truck in one of the city’s northern neighbourhoods.
And aid agencies hoping to distribute food supplies are also say that their efforts may need more security.
UN peacekeepers were patrolling Port-au-Prince last night to try to quell tensions.
Its World Food Programme reported yesterday that its warehouses had been looted and said it did not know how much of its stockpile of 15,000 tons of aid remained.
And it warned that hygiene could soon become a major problem as thousands of bodies are left to rot in the street.
Hundreds of corpses were stacked outside the city morgue last night, while limbs of the dead protruded from the rubble of collapsed office buildings, schools and homes.
–Agencies–