PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Amid the chaos and heartache enveloping the capital came a rare, but wondrous, moment of joy on Friday.
A 4-year-old boy was pulled to safety three days after he was buried alive in his two-story family home. He was exhausted and intensely dehydrated but miraculously unharmed.
People in the street ran to get a glimpse of Paul Derlice as he was carried down a huge pile of rubble by the heroic Haitian men who slaved for hours in the blazing sun to free him.
Strangers formed a large circle around the small boy and jostled each other out of the way to get a closer look, reaching their hands into the sky and exclaiming: “God lives!”
On this, the third day since a 7-magnitude earthquake struck the Haitian capital, leveling most of the city and killing untold thousands, it was a sight that few dared to hope for – but everyone needed to see.
“I’m very proud, I feel like a hero,” said Jean Mercilien, one of the crew who rescued the boy armed with only a pick axe and a couple of hammers. “God let this boy live,” he added.
Paul was in the ground floor of his family home in the Carrefour-Feuilles section of Port-au-Prince when the quake hit.
His mother and aunt were on the top floor of the house and managed to escape unharmed.
But Paul was presumed dead in the rubble, along with three others who lived in the building.
For days, the young boy was alone, trapped in the small dark cavity, and no one was looking for him.
As soon as news broke that Paul had been saved, friends rushed to find his mother, Ketly Charleston, so the pair could be reunited for the first time in more than 66 hours. She threw her arms in the air in praise and looked at him as if unable to believe her eyes.
“It’s a miracle,” Charleston, 50, said. “I thought it was impossible that he was alive.”
Friends and neighbors had been climbing over the remains of the house, one of a cluster in close proximity that have all been reduced to ruins, helping to salvage whatever they could: some photos, the Bible, a phone charger or a pair of shoes.
They heard no voices from beneath the debris, and the smell of decaying bodies steadily worsened.
About 8 a.m. Friday, Rene Contant, who works for Paul’s mother, heard a voice from deep underground. “I was passing by and speaking aloud and the child heard that,” he explained.
“He said, ‘Boss Rene’ and ‘Mama.’ Then he started crying,” said Contant, 58.
The much-promised influx of aid to help the masses has failed to emerge on the streets of Port-au-Prince, so these men were forced to begin digging using whatever primitive resources they had on hand.
The sun was searingly hot, and supplies of fresh water were scarce, but they went on without pause.
They made steady progress chipping away at the huge slabs of concrete. After the men had been working for two hours, the first sighting of international help appeared: three large UN trucks filled with workers.
The makeshift rescue crew shouted and waved excitedly for help and beckoned the UN trucks over, but they stopped only momentarily before driving on. It was thought they might be heading to a nearby school which has also collapsed, trapping several children inside.
The men were disappointed but kept digging, and Paul was set free less than 30 minutes later.
Despite spending the better part of three days wedged in hot, dark and humid crevice, the frail, thin little child had barely a scratch on him.
He did not speak, and had trouble standing, but stared around at the crowds wide-eyed while his rescuers washed the dust from him.
They put him in clean clothes, which appeared from out of nowhere from someone in the crowd, and he chewed on an energy bar and slowly sipped water.
His ecstatic family then carried him back to a friend’s home where his mother has been staying since the quake.
He was laid down on top of several blankets while his family fussed around him and gave him small, careful, sips of a sweet and salty fluid to help rehydrate him.
“It’s been a catastrophe, but now this is a miracle,” said Paul’s aunt, Rosemelie Simeon, 48, sitting beside her nephew and stroking his head. “We’ve had no aid, nothing – nothing at all.”
From: www.nydailynews.com
