Israeli rescuers in Haiti
Photo: AP
Israeli field hospital
Photo: AP
Israeli team saves Haitian woman
Team working at wreckage of university pulls student out alive, but Israelis working to rescue six-year old girl from wreckage of her home is unsuccessful
PORT AU-PRINCE – An Israeli Homefront Command team in Haiti rescued a female student lying under the wreckage of Port au-Prince's university early Tuesday morning.
The Israeli team working among the rubble that was once a four-story university building joined other delegations from Nicaragua, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Russia, which were also searching for survivors.
Another team attempted to save a six-year old girl buried under the ruins of her home, using state of the art equipment to monitor her heart, but after nine hours abandoned the efforts to find her alive.
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A man and a woman were trapped between the second and third floor. When the team arrived the man had already been rescued, but the woman remained in need of help, Major Amir Ben-David recounted.
Six days have passed since the 7.0 magnitude quake hit Haiti, and the rescuers realized it was probably their last chance to pull anyone out alive. Heavy equipment was used to lift wreckage from the ruined building, and the woman was safely extracted.
The two surviving students spent six days trapped in the building, and were lucky pockets of air had been created around them when it collapsed.
"They were stooping, with open wounds, and totally covered in dust," Ben-David said. "The woman succeeded in speaking and told us her name, and that she was a student at the university."
He added that they had treated her at the scene and later evacuated her to the Israeli field hospital. "She is generally fine, but her left leg may not survive. I hope the doctors save her," the major concluded.
When the rescue was completed the Israeli team, comprised of Major Ben-David, Colonel Dadi Simchi, Captain Shlomi Ben-Yair, and Lieutenant-Colonel Dr. Bader Tarif, was applauded by locals surrounding the building.
Patient cared for at Israeli field hospital (Photo: AP)
'We tried everything'
But six-year old Lods Chaulers was not so lucky. She was not found after nine hours of searching her home, and rescue efforts were ultimately abandoned. Rescuers imagined they could see her through a tiny hole they made in the wreckage, using a tiny optic device, but the figure they saw turned out to be a doll.
Nir Hazut, a member of the team, recounted the failed rescue. "Suddenly I saw a girl and yelled, 'Widen the hole, widen the hole!'" he said.
"When I saw (the doll) I was already convinced it was the girl, and I almost broke the wall with my head from the excitement, I wanted so much to believe that she would be there," said Doron Ziv, another member of the team.
But upon completing a search of the final room with the camera rescuers gave up hope. During the last two hours of the rescue efforts a fire had broken out, complicating things further. The father, waiting outside for news of his daughter, asked Nir if they would come back the next day.
Nir answered, "No, unfortunately we didn't find anything, but we tried. We tried everything." The father said he had seen. Nir apologized. "It's okay," the father told him.
On the way back to the base Nir said, "It was hardest to speak to the father. It's impossible to perceive that hundreds of thousands of people have died this way, such a cruel death."
