’I survived on Coca-Cola’: man stuck 11 days in Haiti rubble

AFP

Port-au-Prince, 24 Jan 2010: A 25-year-old Haitian man rescued after spending 11 days buried in the ruins of a grocer’s shop survived on snacks and Coca-Cola, he told AFP in a hospital interview. 

 
"I feel good," said 25-year-old Wismond Exantus, after he became the latest Haitian victim of last week’s earthquake to be pulled from the rubble by international search and rescue teams.

"I survived by drinking Coca-Cola. I drank Coca-Cola every day, and I ate some little tiny things," he explained in Creole, after having spent a week and a half stuck in his place of work, the "Napolitain" grocery.

"I felt the tremor and then I lost consciousness, and when I woke up I called out ’Gerald! Gerald!’," he said, referring to a co-worker.

He found himself caught in a small pocket in the rubble, able to move slightly to the left and right -- and to bang on objects to try to attract the attention of passers-by -- but unable to free himself.

"I didn’t shout, I just prayed," he said at a French field hospital in Port-au-Prince after French, American and Greek search and rescue teams removed him from the debris on a stretcher.

His body is thin but not emaciated, his voice weak but not faltering as he insists there are six more people alive in the building that was his temporary tomb, although rescue workers said they could detect no other signs of life.