{"id":318,"date":"2010-01-24T09:15:55","date_gmt":"2010-01-24T09:15:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/2010\/01\/24\/survivor-pulled-from-shop-ruins-11-days-after-quake\/"},"modified":"2010-01-24T09:15:55","modified_gmt":"2010-01-24T09:15:55","slug":"survivor-pulled-from-shop-ruins-11-days-after-quake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/survivor-pulled-from-shop-ruins-11-days-after-quake\/","title":{"rendered":"Survivor pulled from shop ruins 11 days after quake"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\" size-full wp-image-317\" src=\"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/fr250.jpg\" border=\"0\" width=\"250\" height=\"86\" \/><\/p>\n<p>A 25-year-old Haitian man rescued on Saturday after spending 11 days buried in  the ruins of a grocer&#8217;s shop survived on snacks and Coca-Cola, he told AFP in a  hospital interview.<!--:Element_Multimedia:4976711:orientation:center:theme:multimedia_element_embedded:--><\/p>\n<p> <!--more--> <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I feel good,&#8221; said 25-year-old Wismond Exantus, after he became the latest  Haitian victim of last week&#8217;s earthquake to be pulled from the rubble by  international search and rescue teams.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I survived by drinking Coca-Cola. I drank Coca-Cola every day, and I ate some  little tiny things,&#8221; he explained in Creole, after having spent a week and a  half stuck in his place of work, the &#8220;Napolitain&#8221; grocery.<br \/>\u00a0 \u00a0<br \/>&#8220;I felt the  tremor and then I lost consciousness, and when I woke up I called out &#8216;Gerald!  Gerald!&#8217;,&#8221; he said, referring to a co-worker.<br \/>\u00a0 \u00a0<br \/>He found himself caught  in a small pocket in the rubble, able to move slightly to the left and right &#8212;  and to bang on objects to try to attract the attention of passers-by &#8212; but  unable to free himself.<br \/>\u00a0 \u00a0<br \/>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t shout, I just prayed,&#8221; he said at a  French field hospital in Port-au-Prince after French, American and Greek search  and rescue teams removed him from the debris on a stretcher.<br \/>\u00a0 \u00a0<br \/>His body  is thin but not emaciated, his voice weak but not faltering as he insists there  are six more people alive in the building that was his temporary tomb, although  rescue workers said they could detect no\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>Medics say he is in remarkably good shape given his ordeal, and the survivor  thanks God for his rescue as doctors encourage him to sleep.<br \/>\u00a0 \u00a0<br \/>Exantus&#8217;  brother Jean-Pierre Jeanelie told AFP that he had feared for him, but had been  unable to approach the ruined shop &#8212; which lies in an unruly neighborhood  plagued by looters &#8212; because of the police.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I helped other people after the quake. I helped get them out of the rubble, but  I couldn&#8217;t get to the shop because the police blocked people from going there,&#8221;  he complained.<br \/>\u00a0 \u00a0<br \/>&#8220;I was losing hope, but not completely, then last night  I had a dream about my brother and when people told me there was noise coming  from the shop I couldn&#8217;t believe it.&#8221;<br \/>\u00a0 \u00a0<br \/>Jeanelie says he lost five  family members in the quake that killed over 112,000 others. Their family home  was destroyed, leaving them to join hundreds of thousands of others sleeping on  the street.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0&#8220;We lost everything, all our money, but people help and give us things,&#8221; he  said.<br \/>\u00a0 \u00a0<br \/>Earlier, French firefighters who had eventually pulled Exantus  from the rubble confirmed that they had not been able to give his neighborhood  the attention they wanted because of the security situation.<\/p>\n<p>Source\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.france24.com\/en\/20100124-survivor-11-days-exantus-grocery-haiti-earthquake-cola-rescued?autoplay=\" title=\"www.france24.com\">France24.com <\/a><\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A 25-year-old Haitian man rescued on Saturday after spending 11 days buried in the ruins&#8230;<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":317,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}