Haiti miracle: 84-year-old woman survives ten days buried after killer quake
By ANISaturday, January 23, 2010
Port-au-PRINCE - In a miraculous survival story, an 84-year-old woman was rescued from the rubble of her Port-au-Prince home ten days after she was buried by Haiti’s killer earthquake.
Marie Carida Roman was taken to Port-au-Prince’s crowded General Hospital, hooked up to a drip and her face covered with an oxygen mask.
She has a crushed chest and lots of maggots all over her body.
“She is 84. She’s been fighting for 10 days, and now I have to give her 24 hours to say what chance she has,” The Telegraph quoted doctor Vladimir Laroche of Coler-Goldwater Specialty Hospital, New York, as saying.
“When she was brought in here, there was no movement. Now her jaw moves. She was completely dehydrated,” Laroche said, adding that the woman had “multiple wounds on her leg and lots of other injuries.”
Carida Roman’s son, a 58-year-old telephone technician, said: “I heard her calling yesterday at around 9:00 or 10:00 in the morning. Friends in the neighbourhood helped dig her out with our bare hands.
“We pulled her out at around 7:00 this morning,” her son said.
The miracle rescue of Carida Roman brings to at least 122 the number of survivors pulled from the wreckage of the catastrophic January 12 earthquake, which left at least 75,000 people dead and half a million homeless. (ANI)