For 48 frantic hours his parents had searched for their two-year-old son, digging with their bare hands among the twisted rubble of their collapsed home.
They could hear his increasingly weak cries but simply could not shift the mangled concrete and metal that had trapped him somewhere below.
Yesterday, however, came the joyous moment they had feared they would never see after the massive earthquake that struck Haiti on Tuesday, killing up to 50,000.
Rescue workers, burrowing deep into the rubble, head torches picking out their route, edged their way successfully towards little Redjeson Claude.
He was then passed along a human chain, his head scarred by dried blood and his face covered in minor wounds.
He looked bewildered – until the moment he saw his mother Daphnee. Then, his eyes lit up and his face creased into a smile as she reached forward to cuddle him.
For the international rescue teams operating in the heart of the broken Haiti capital Port-au-Prince, it was a moment of relief and achievement as they worked, often in wreckage containing bodies, in a race against time to find those still alive.
The morale of the British rescue team was also raised when they dug out a two-year-old girl from a collapsed building.
She had been trapped for three days and was pulled free by firefighters from Greater Manchester who named her Mia.
‘Following a lengthy and difficult operation in high temperatures, one of the teams managed to reach Mia who was trapped under piles of rubble under a kindergarten school that had totally collapsed,’ said a spokesman. It was the first full day of deployment for the British team.
Daily Mail
Vocabulary
frantic – ?rült, rémes, kétségbeesett
rubble – k?törmelék
to shift – elmozdít
mangled concrete – összetört, szétroncsolt beton
bewildered – rémült
to light up – felcsillan
to cuddle – ölelkezik, összebújik
relief – segítség, megkönnyebbülés
wreckage – törmelék
piles of rubble – k?halmok
deployment – munkába állás
debris – k?törmelék
inadequate – alkalmatlan, hiányos
sniffer dog – nyomkövet? kutya
looter – fosztogató
to scavenge – megtisztít, eltakarít, összegy?jt, ill. hullát kifoszt, tetemmel táplálkozik
to quell – lecsendesít, lecsillapít
stockpile – tartalékkészlet
to rot – rothad
További információk a földrengésr?l, megrázó képekkel!
A haiti lakosok segélyért könyörögnek.
Desperate Haitians pleaded with international authorities yesterday to do more to get emergency aid to those who need it. Governments across the world are pouring relief supplies and medical teams into the Caribbean state – already the poorest in the Western Hemisphere.
But the sheer scale of the destruction and logistical problems in distributing supplies has meant hundreds of thousands in the capital Port-au-Prince are without food, water or shelter. The earthquake badly damaged the city’s seaport, allowing only limited use, while its airport has been forced to turn away aid planes because of a lack of space and fuel.
Relief workers have also been unable to reach the most badly affected by truck because of debris on roads that were already inadequate before the quake hit. In two areas of the capital, groups of survivors stacked rotting corpses across main roads to protest about the lack of aid.
One man begged: ‘We need food, water, doctors, medicine. We need it now – tomorrow is too late – we are thirsty now.’ However, hopes were raised last night after hundreds of U.S. troops – part of a 5,500-strong force promised by President Obama – arrived in Haiti.
British search and rescue teams with sniffer dogs and heavy lifting equipment have also touched down, and spent much of yesterday combing the wreckage for survivors. But many Haitians – facing their fourth night of sleeping in the open air – are growing angry and desperate.
Looters roamed downtown streets armed with machetes while others salvaged goods, including scraps of food, scavenged from the rubble. Michel Legros, 53, who was searching for several relatives under the concrete of his collapsed home, said: ‘They are scavenging everything. We’re worried that people will get a little uneasy,’ he added. ‘People have not been eating or drinking for almost 50 hours and are already in a very poor situation.’
UN peacekeepers were patrolling Port-au-Prince last night to try to quell tensions.
Its World Food Programme reported yesterday that its warehouses had been looted and said it did not know how much of its stockpile of 15,000 tons of aid remained. And it warned that hygiene could soon become a major problem as thousands of bodies are left to rot in the street.
