French rescuers pull girl from quake debris

(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-01-28 09:46

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti: French rescuers pulled a teenage girl from the rubble of the destroyed College St. Gerard campus Wednesday, a stunning recovery 15 days after an earthquake devastated the city.

Darlene Etienne, her body covered in gray dust, was rushed to a French military field hospital, groaning through an oxygen mask with her eyes open in a lost stare.

French rescuers pull girl from quake debris

Members of the French search and rescue gesture seconds before pulling out a girl from a building alive in Port-au-Prince, Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2010. French rescuers pulled a teenage girl out of the rubble 15 days after an earthquake hit the Caribbean capital.[Agencies]

"She's alive!" said paramedic Paul Francois-Valette, who accompanied her into the hospital.

Her family said Etienne, 17, had just started studying when the disaster struck, trapping dozens of people in the rubble of school buildings, hostels and homes.

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"We thought she was dead," her cousin, Jocelyn A. St. Jules, said in a telephone call from Marche Dessalines, a town north of the capital.

The last confirmed rescue of someone trapped by the initial quake occurred Saturday, 11 days later, when a man was extricated from the ruins of a hotel grocery store. A man pulled Tuesday from the rubble of a downtown store later and treated by the?US military for severe dehydration and a broken leg said he had been trapped during an aftershock.

At least 135 people have been unearthed by rescue teams since the Jan. 12 quake, and many more by relatives and neighbors. But most of these rescues were in the immediate aftermath and authorities say it is rare for anyone to survive more than 72 hours without water.

Darlene Etienne, 17, rests in a French military field hospital after being rescued from a building in Port-au-Prince, Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2010. French rescuers pulled the teenage girl out of the rubble 15 days after an earthquake hit the Caribbean capital.[Agencies]?