Haiti miracle: 17-year-old girl survives 15 days after being buried in killer quake

Port-au-PRINCE - A remarkable fifteen days after being buried by Haiti’s killer quake, a teenage girl has been pulled alive from the rubble of a collapsed school in the capital of the Caribbean nation.

French rescuers who found Darlene Etienne, 17, said it was a miracle that she had survived for more than two weeks trapped in the debris.

“I don’t know how she happened to resist that long. It’s a miracle,” said rescue worker J.P. Malaganne.

Etienne is being said to be one of the world’s longest survivors of an earthquake.

Rescuers said she was shocked and dehydrated but happy to be free.

“She just said ‘thank you,’ she’s very weak, which suggests that she’s been there for 15 days. She was in a pocket surrounded by concrete,” Commander Samuel Bernes of the rescue team said.

Her family, which had assumed her dead, said she had been studying at the College of St Gerard when the powerful earthquake struck on January 12.

Her cousin, Jocelyn A. St. Jules, said: “We thought she was dead.”

Her discovery comes five days after the Haitian government officially announced the end of search and rescue operations.

Etienne’s neighbours had been searching in the rubble of their home in the central Carrefour-Feuilles district when they heard a voice and alerted rescue teams.

The girl was trapped between a collapsed wall and a door and was able to lie down, rescuers said.

Etienne, who has an injury to her leg, was given oxygen and taken to a French-run field hospital for treatment.

More than 130 people have been unearthed since the earthquake, but most of those were in the immediate aftermath of the disaster and authorities have said it is unlikely for anyone to survive more than 72 hours without water. But the stories of survival against the odds in Haiti continue. (ANI)