Haiti quake survivor recounts 5-day ordeal pinned to the ground under the rubble

Survivor recounts 5 days trapped in the rubble

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Trapped for five days in the rubble of a hospital, nailed to the floor by the leg of a bunk bed, the 23-year-old carpenter played his life over in his mind and dreamt how he would live it differently if a miracle set him free.

“I kept thinking, what a pity to leave so early, with so little accomplished,” Benito Revolus said, that miracle now a reality.

Despite a severely infected leg, a punctured lung and numerous gashes and bruises, Revolus’ smile grew ever wider as he recounted his story, lying on the lawn of the damaged headquarters of Medecins Sans Frontieres or Doctors Without Borders, a French aid group.

“Sometimes, I still can’t believe I’m here,” Revolus said.

Revolus was being treated for a stab wound at another hospital and was lying in the middle of a three-level bunk bed when the earthquake hit Jan. 12, killing an estimated 200,000.

“I thought it was the end. The ceiling collapsed before I even understood what happened,” Revolus said. Others in the room fled, but he couldn’t because the top section of his bed collapsed on him, piercing through his left thigh and pinning him to the ground.

But the top bunk also provided the breathing space that kept him alive — leaving him just enough to turn his chest around when the pain became unbearable.

Doctors typically consider three days the maximum time a seriously injured person losing blood can survive underground. But Revolus spent five days under several feet of rubble, with nothing to drink or eat. “I got so, so hungry,” he said, smiling again.

“That Benito got out of there was unusual,” said Susan Shepherd of New York, the MSF coordinator in Haiti. “He’s a lucky guy.”

Revolus wasn’t so surprised. “I never completely lost hope,” he said, though he acknowledged it was very difficult to remain optimistic when his shouts drew no response. And he knew that having no other survivors with him diminished his chances of rescue.

With nothing else to do, Revolus spent his lonely vigil praying and reflecting on his life. “I thought about how sad my mum must be because of me,” he said, adding he was certain he felt her prayers.

He also did an accounting of his good and bad deeds.

“I asked God to free me, and I promised him I wouldn’t waste my second chance,” said Revolus, who had initially been hospitalized after being stabbed in a fight over money.

His first step would be to forgive all old scores, he said, and then he pledged to “never play at the lottery again.”

Revolus said tiny cracks in the debris helped him track the days, allowing him some idea of whether the sun was out or not.

He said it was just after dawn on the fifth day, Saturday, that God answered his prayers, and probably his mother’s as well.

“I heard three taps from a hammer,” he said, showing how he took a stone to tap back three times.

For the rest of the day, he heard a jackhammer, circular saws and pliers working. About 4 p.m., he heard a foreigner say in broken French: “My friend, I’m here with other friends, and we’re going to get you out.”

Five minutes later, someone lifted a slab above him and Revolus felt a rush of warm tropical light from Haiti’s late afternoon sun.

“Then I saw a human face. It was a young white man, grinning,” Revolus said. “He said, ‘Good afternoon,’ and I answered, ‘Thank you. Thank you.’”

He described the rescue team as American, with bright yellow uniforms and plastic helmets. The team began applauding, aware that finding someone alive so late in the rescue effort was a small miracle.

Since Saturday, a handful of others have been pulled out alive, including 69-year-old Ena Zizi, who was rescued from the Roman Catholic compound and flown to the Dominican Republic for treatment on Tuesday. One of the last confirmed rescues was overnight Tuesday, when Lozama Hotteline, 26, was pulled from a supermarket in midtown Port-au-Prince, smiling and singing hymns.

A Taiwanese team of rescuers was still busy Wednesday at a gas station where they had located two people alive the day before. But it rained overnight and a magnitude-5.9 tremor shook the Haitian capital in the morning. All this has made the debris more compact, said Dr. Yi Ting Tsai. The two survivors believed inside weren’t giving any sign of life Wednesday, he said.

Revolus knows he’s “unbelievably lucky” to have been dragged out. Once he can walk again, he hopes to be able to travel to the United States to meet the firefighters who saved him.

“I’d like to visit them to say thank you,” Revolus said. “And maybe they can also help me get a visa to live in America.”