New York police and fire department search and rescue teams yesterday saved four people who had been buried under rubble since a 7.0 magnitude earthquake shook Haiti to its core on Tuesday.
Rescuers pulled a man from a ruined four-story building on Rue Belencourt in Port-au-Prince in the afternoon, police said. Rescuers used jackhammers and cutting tools to reach the 55-year-old after finding him using a camera. Before he could be extricated, Det. Randin Miller, an NYPD paramedic, crawled into the debris to bring the dehydrated man fluids through an IV line. The man, who was on the third floor when the earthquake struck, was not seriously injured, police said.
Earlier in the day, another New York City team completed an all-night effort at a collapsed grocery store by rescuing two men and a teenage girl. The girl was treated for a leg injury at a U.N. hospital set up at the airport and the two men for unknown injuries.
The 40 NYPD and 40 FDNY members are divided into teams based at the Port-au-Prince airport and work shifts that run around the clock. They are expected to stay for at least one week.
