Another miracle in Haiti
Posted: Tue Jan 19, 2010 10:46 am
Posted from "Everything and Anything Virgin Islands" on Facebook
Miracle as girl, two, is found alive under Haiti earthquake rubble by Manchester rescue team
By DANIEL BOFFEY and MARTIN DELGADO
A team of British firefighters told of their desperate five-hour struggle to pull a two-year-old girl from the rubble of a nursery destroyed by the Haiti earthquake.The hysterical toddler, cal...led Mia, had been trapped under the ruins of the building for three days alongside the bodies of her dead friends before her breathing was picked up by her rescuers' sonar equipment.Working in sweltering heat, the firemen, from Manchester and Wales, then dug with their hands, shovels and picks to reach her.
The gap through which they pulled Mia was so small that they had to carefully cut away her pigtails - which were held by pink hairbands - to prise her out from under the ruins. Dehydrated but suffering from nothing more than cuts and bruises, the little girl was then reunited with her mother, who had been watching helplessly.
The British firefighters who rescued Mia were in a 64-strong team from eight brigades sent to Haiti as part of the UK aid effort. Simon Cording, 35, the rescuer who pulled Mia from the rubble, said: ‘Mia was just one of the lucky ones. The devastation here is so vast. Back home we complain about a bit of snow but that is nothing in comparison to what these people are going through.’An unknown number of children playing in the nursery were crushed by the roof and walls of the building when the earthquake
struck on Tuesday.

Miracle as girl, two, is found alive under Haiti earthquake rubble by Manchester rescue team
By DANIEL BOFFEY and MARTIN DELGADO
A team of British firefighters told of their desperate five-hour struggle to pull a two-year-old girl from the rubble of a nursery destroyed by the Haiti earthquake.The hysterical toddler, cal...led Mia, had been trapped under the ruins of the building for three days alongside the bodies of her dead friends before her breathing was picked up by her rescuers' sonar equipment.Working in sweltering heat, the firemen, from Manchester and Wales, then dug with their hands, shovels and picks to reach her.
The gap through which they pulled Mia was so small that they had to carefully cut away her pigtails - which were held by pink hairbands - to prise her out from under the ruins. Dehydrated but suffering from nothing more than cuts and bruises, the little girl was then reunited with her mother, who had been watching helplessly.
The British firefighters who rescued Mia were in a 64-strong team from eight brigades sent to Haiti as part of the UK aid effort. Simon Cording, 35, the rescuer who pulled Mia from the rubble, said: ‘Mia was just one of the lucky ones. The devastation here is so vast. Back home we complain about a bit of snow but that is nothing in comparison to what these people are going through.’An unknown number of children playing in the nursery were crushed by the roof and walls of the building when the earthquake
struck on Tuesday.
