IE 11 is not supported. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser.

Rescue crews pull 2 more from Haitian market

At a collapsed Caribbean Supermarket where search teams from Florida and New York City worked, rescuers late Sunday pulled two survivors from what had been its fourth floor.
Members of the FEMA Search and Rescue team provide medical care to an American woman, a survivor of Tuesday's earthquake, at the remains of Caribbean Supermarket in Port-au-Prince
A woman is treated after being rescued from under a collapsed 5-story supermarket early Sunday. She was later identified as Mireille Dittmer, a Haitian-born U.S. resident.Carlos Garcia Rawlins / Reuters
/ Source: NBC, msnbc.com and news services

At a collapsed Caribbean Supermarket where search teams from Florida and New York City worked, rescuers late Sunday pulled two survivors from what had been its fourth floor. Officials said both were in stable condition, able to survive for so long by eating food trapped along with them. Earlier in the day, a policeman reported three other people had been rescued from the rubble.

Crews had located the pair on Sunday afternoon and worked to get them out, NBC's Kerry Sanders reported from the scene.

One official coordinating the rescue efforts there told Sanders that a text message believed sent from under the rubble indicated that "more than 60" people were alive there. Officials later said that number was probably a mistake.

The supermarket's manager, Samer Tahmoush, estimated that there would have been around 75 to 100 shoppers inside the market in the Delmas neighborhood when the quake hit.

The supermarket, one of the biggest in Port-au-Prince, had completely collapsed on itself, its upper layers falling on those below like a squeezed concertina.

Crushed supermarket trolleys were visible between the sandwiched layers of concrete. Also visible were green and orange supermarket shelving and scattered debris and wares like tea bags, cat food, kitchenware, electronic goods and children's toys, toilet rolls and bathroom sponges.

"We've had to cut through three floors from above, we've been digging through concrete floors, shelving, food, and everything else you would find in a supermarket," said Jose Mendia from the FEMA Florida rescue team.

"It's a really consolidated collapse, what we call a pancake collapse," he added.

"The best time to get somebody back is within 96 hours, but if they have access to food and water, they could survive longer," he said. It was believed that some of those trapped deep inside might be able to reach food and water near them.

Tahmoush said many of his staff had managed to run out fast enough and escape being buried. Many others too had been pulled out quickly from the rubble by rescuers.

But Tahmoush said he knew that a number of his employees — cashiers and bag packers — were buried under the wreckage.

U.N. staffer, hotel co-owner rescued
In another rescue, a Danish U.N. employee was freed from the destroyed headquarters on Sunday. He was talking and given water before being rushed off for medical treatment. He was found just 15 minutes after U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon visited the scene.

And the co-owner of the Hotel Montana was pulled out from under the rubble of what had been a luxury hotel. Nadine Cardoso was dehydrated but otherwise uninjured.

"It's a little miracle," said Reinhard Riedl, her husband. "She's one tough cookie. She is indestructible."

Twelve hours after the rescue effort began, with more than 20 friends and relatives of the prominent community member watching early Sunday, Cardoso was lowered from a hill of debris on a stretcher.

The rescue was bittersweet for Cardoso's sister, because rescuers also told Gerthe Cardoso they had to abandon a search for her 7-year-old grandson when an aftershock closed a space where he was believed to be.

Teams save more than 70
U.N. humanitarian spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said 1,739 rescue workers in 43 teams with 161 dogs and high-tech equipment so far have saved more than 70 people.

The U.N. itself lost at least 40 staff — including its mission chief Hedi Annabi — with hundreds still missing. "For the United Nations, this is the gravest and greatest single loss in the history of our organization," Ban said.

He added that the U.N. was already feeding 40,000 and hopes to feed 2 million within a month.

For many others, though, the five days since the magnitude-7.0 quake hit have turned into an aching wait for the food, water and medical care slowly making its way from an overwhelmed airport rife with political squabbles. And while aid is reaching the country, growing impatience among the suffering has spawned some violence.

Image: Searching for survivors at a supermarket
Members of the FEMA Search and Rescue team from New York search the remains of Caribbean Supermarket in Port-au-Prince January 17, 2010. Dramatizing the need to keep up rescue efforts, three people were pulled out alive from a supermarket early Sunday. U.S. and Turkish teams freed a 7-year-old Haitian girl, a Haitian man and an American woman from the rubble of the five-story building. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins (HAITI - Tags: DISASTER)Carlos Garcia Rawlins / X02433

Nobody knows how many died in Tuesday's quake. Haiti's government alone has already recovered 20,000 bodies — not counting those recovered by independent agencies or relatives themselves, Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said.

The Pan American Health Organization now says 50,000 to 100,000 people perished in the quake. Bellerive said 100,000 would "seem to be the minimum."

Byrs declared the quake the worst disaster the U.N. has ever faced, since so much government and U.N. capacity in the country was demolished. In that way, Byrs said in Geneva, it's worse than the cataclysmic Asian tsunami of 2004: "Everything is damaged."

Two suspected looters found dead
Amid the struggle for food, some turned to looting, infuriating people struggling to guard what little they still have.

Gunfire crackled in the streets as police battled suspected looters in parts of the city. Officers were seen hurling tear gas canisters, sending crowds running along the rubble-strewn avenues. At least some suspected looters were beaten and shot.

Haitians seemed increasingly frustrated by a seemingly invisible government — some setting bonfires in a downtown street to burn the bodies authorities have been unable to remove, leaving passers-by to cover their faces against the smell of burning flesh.

Image: Child rescued from supermarket in Haiti
Members of the FEMA Search and Rescue team from South Florida and New York provide medical care to a seven-year-old child, a survivor of Tuesday's earthquake, at the remains of Caribbean Supermarket in Port-au-Prince January 17, 2010. Five days after a 7.0 magnitude quake killed up to 200,000 people, international rescue teams were still finding people alive under the rubble of collapsed buildings in Port-au-Prince. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins (HAITI - Tags: DISASTER ENVIRONMENT)Carlos Garcia Rawlins / X02433

Two suspected looters lay on the street in the Delmas neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, both beaten and with their hands bound together. Some in the angry crowd that gathered around them said they had been attacked by angry residents, others that police had caused their wounds.

One lay completely motionless, his dreadlocked hair stained by a deep pool of dark crimson blood. The other lay bleeding profusely but occasionally twitched his leg.

A few hours later, a reporter found both men were dead. However they got that way — whether vigilante justice or police execution — all agreed that they were criminals who had escaped from the destroyed prison.

Aid delivery appeared to be speeding up.

Florence Louis, seven months pregnant with two children, was one of thousands of Haitians who gathered at a gate at the Cite Soleil slum, where U.N. World Food Program workers handed out high-energy biscuits for the first time.

"It is enough because I didn't have anything at all," said Louis, 29, clutching four packets of biscuits.

The Haitian government has established 14 distribution points for food and other supplies, and U.S. Army helicopters scouted locations for more. Aid groups opened five emergency health centers. Vital gear, such as water-purification units, was arriving from abroad.

On a hillside golf course, perhaps 50,000 people were sleeping in a makeshift tent city overlooking the stricken capital. Paratroopers of the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division flew there Saturday to set up a base for handing out water and food.

After the initial frenzy among the waiting crowd, when helicopters could only hover and toss out their cargo, a second flight landed and soldiers passed out some 2,000 military-issue ready-to-eat meals to an orderly line of Haitians.

But aid delivery was still bogged down by congestion at the Port-au-Prince airport, quake damage at the seaport, poor roads and the fear of looters and robbers.

"Many people are just fleeing to the countryside, they are looking for a place to stay and for food," said Enel Legrand, a 24-year-old Haitian volunteer aid worker.

Tension over relief flights
The airport congestion also touched off diplomatic rows between the U.S. military and other donor nations.

Doctors Without Borders said Sunday that a cargo plane carrying a field hospital was denied permission to land at the airport and had to be rerouted through the Dominican Republic — creating a 24-hour delay in setting up a crucial field hospital.

France and Brazil both lodged official complaints that the U.S. military, in control of the international airport, had denied landing permission to relief flights from their countries.

Haitian President Rene Preval, speaking with the AP, urged all to "keep our cool and coordinate and not throw accusations."

As relief teams grappled with on-the-ground obstacles, U.S. leadership promised Saturday to step up aid efforts. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited and pledged more American assistance.

President Barack Obama met with former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton in Washington and urged Americans to donate to Haiti relief efforts. Former President Clinton on Sunday announced that he would travel to Haiti on Monday.

In Port-au-Prince, hundreds of Haitians simply dropped to their knees outside a warehouse when workers for the agency Food for the Poor announced they would distribute rice, beans and other supplies.

"They started praying right then and there," said project director Clement Belizaire.

Children and the elderly were asked to step first into line, and some 1,500 people got food, soap and rubber sandals until supplies ran out, he said.