PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Rescue workers rejoiced early Sunday morning after finding a woman alive — and without injury — buried beneath the collapsed Hotel Montana.
A Haitian woman in her mid-50s was trapped for five days and was found after 12 hours of digging, said Luis Miguel Gonzalez, from the Colombian Red Cross.
“We had a little party after she was found,” he said. “She was in perfect health and had no injuries. She was conscious and talking.”
Gonzalez said they found her at 2 a.m. Sunday, two metres underground.
“It took a lot of effort,” he said.
Teams from Columbia, Spain and Brazil used three dogs to locate her amidst the rubble.
International rescue workers have been working around the clock to dig for survivors at the luxury hotel where many foreigners, including Canadians, are believed to be.
But now the rescue effort is turning into a search for the dead.
Joelle Benoit still believes her daughter, Sarah Lauture, a 28-year-old who studied at McGill University, will be found alive.
Lauture worked at the hilltop resort. Her boss was the woman who was found Sunday after the midnight dig.
“It doesn’t give me hope, it reinforces my conviction and my faith,” Benoit said. “We will find all these people alive.”
But other family members are not so confident.
Zip Hinton came to Haiti from Altanta to look for his niece Courtney Hays after she was mistakenly reported alive last Wednesday.
“There is always hope but every minute it gets slimmer,” he said, adding day five is “the cutoff point, just about.”
Hinton said he feels frustrated because crews don’t have the tools required to sift through the heavy concrete slabs.
“They don’t have much to work with. No heavy equipment here,” he said. “It’s just hand labour.”
