11 Days After Quake in Haiti, Man Pulled Alive From Rubble

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Jan. 23) -- An international team of rescuers unearthed a 23-year-old man in good condition from deep beneath the concrete and wooden wreckage of a hotel grocery store Saturday, 11 days after an earthquake crumbled Haiti's capital.

Dozens of onlookers wearing masks against the stench of the city's decaying bodies cheered when Rismond Exantus, clad in a black T-shirt and black pants, was carried from a narrow tunnel on a stretcher and placed in an ambulance. He braced one arm with the other.


"I was hungry," Exantus told The Associated Press from his hospital bed soon after the rescue. "But every night I thought about the revelation that I would survive."

He said he survived initially by diving under a desk when the rubble started to fall around him. Trapped in such a small space, he had lie on his back the entire time and survived by drinking cola, beer and cookies.

"I would eat anything I found," he said. "After the quake I didn't know when it was day and when it was night."