New York cops and firefighters pulled off a miracle last night — rescuing a young brother and sister buried for seven days in the rubble of a Haitian supermarket.
The team found the 10-year-old girl and her 8-year-old brother “two stories” under the flattened three-story building on Martin Luther King Boulevard in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Delmas, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said.
They were treated for dehydration before being reunited with their parents, who managed to escape the building before it collapsed.
6.0 QUAKE RATTLES HAITI RESCUE EFFORTS
They were the fifth and sixth victims found alive by the NYPD-FDNY team.
Earlier in the day, the same rescuers had pulled the lifeless bodies of the youngsters’ three siblings from the wreckage.
The rescue was done with the help of a team from Virginia.
The rescues capped a day that included military helicopters carrying combat-gear-clad US troops landing on the lawn of Haiti’s damaged presidential palace. Officials hope the stunning display will help jumpstart the slow-moving global effort to bring aid to the crippled country. Thousands of survivors cheered “Great!” and “Here they come!” as the first troops hit the ground from five choppers.
By late yesterday, 800 of 2,200 Marines from Camp Lejeune, NC, had established a beachhead outside decimated Port-au-Prince.
The base, which will have the capacity to produce 40,000 gallons of drinkable water a day, will serve as a much-needed aid-distribution point beyond the city’s overburdened airport. In all, US troop strength is expected to grow to 11,000 both on shore and aboard ships in the Caribbean Sea.
Around 2,000 Canadian soldiers also were being deployed to a town southwest of the capital and ships from Italy, Spain and Venezuela are en route.
Meanwhile, the UN Security Council approved adding 2,000 troops to the 7,000 peacekeepers now there, as well 1,500 more cops.
Additional reporting by Larry Celona, Tim Perone and Post Wire Services