The tale seems dubious: that a rice vendor survived 27 days trapped under the rubble of a flea market following Haiti’s devastating earthquake.
Skeptical health workers said no one could live that long without water and the last confirmed survivor found was a 16-year-old girl removed from rubble 15 days after the Jan. 12 quake. The only sources for the story were the two Haitian men who showed up at a clinic carrying the vendor, dehydrated and malnourished, with rail-thin legs.
But then the patient became lucid enough to tell his tale on Tuesday. And while his account has not been independently verified, doctors now say the 28-year-old man could have survived on water and possibly some fruit beneath the rubble.
The man — identified as Evans Monsigrace — told doctors he had just finished selling rice for the day at a downtown Port-au-Prince flea market when the quake hit. He said he didn’t suffer any major injuries and was trapped on his side in an area where food and drink vendors were selling their goods.
“Based on that [his story], we believe him,” said Dushyantha Jayaweera, a physician at the University of Miami Medishare field hospital where hundreds of patients have been treated since the quake.
The story began when two men first took the vendor to a Salvation Army medical center in Port-au-Prince on Monday, saying he had been trapped since the earthquake.
He was later moved to the University of Miami hospital because of his critical condition.
“He came in delirious, asking to die,” said Nery Ynclan, a University of Miami media officer in Haiti, noting that Creole translators were at the field hospital.
Ynclan said the rice vendor was in stable condition on Tuesday and being treated for dehydration and malnutrition. He was nibbling on chocolate, she said.
“Someone could not survive 28 days without water,” Ynclan said. “You can go nine weeks without food.”
Doctors have said that disaster survivors may be able to sustain themselves with a water supply and without medical attention for up to two weeks.
Jayaweera said the man first said he had not had any water or food. However, he had normal kidney function with heart palpitations, suggesting he had drunk something, but not enough to avoid getting dehydrated, the doctor said.
Meanwhile, rescue workers abandoned the search for survivors at a supermarket that collapsed on Tuesday with several people thought to be inside.
After almost six hours of searching, rescue teams using listening equipment and specialized cameras said they saw no signs of life and began to leave the site, which partially collapsed in last month’s quake.
They earlier sawed away at debris under the glare of flood lights, trying to find an estimated five to eight people thought to be in the Caribbean Market, at various points asking for silence so they could listen for victims.
The latest collapse occurred as a private contractor was recovering the bodies of those killed in last month’s quake — the victims of which still lay nearby covered in white sheets.
“There were looters inside the building,” site supervisor Meir Vaknin said. “I was trying to get rid of them and when the building fell there were some of them inside.”
He estimated five to eight people had been inside.
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