PORT-AU-PRINCE — It was a day for miracles, and just 500 feet away, aching grief.
An NYPD-FDNY rescue team yesterday pulled out alive a 55-year-old man trapped since Tuesday in the rubble of a four-story building on Rue Belencourt.
And at the same time, just 500 feet away, a smaller contingent of the crew worked in vain to find a trapped, young Brooklyn medical student.
Both groups were part of a team that had initially headed to the once-swanky Canapé Vert neighborhood to help a Taiwanese crew pull survivors from the rubble on a hill overlooking this devastated city.
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But before the New York rescuers got to their destination, a desperate Phillipe Gelin, 45, of Midwood, Brooklyn, stopped them in the street, frantically explaining that he was looking for his niece, Diana Noel, a 24-year-old Long Island University-Brooklyn Campus med student.
Gelin said he’d heard the faint cries of a woman from underneath the pancaked rubble.
Without a moment’s hesitation, five task-force members began the search of the four-story apartment owned by Noel’s parents — Anthony, 66, and Yolan, 54. It was where the young woman had gone with a sister on vacation.
“Diana!” yelled Detective Andy Bershad of the NYPD ESU 1, sticking his head precariously underneath a large slab of broken concrete. “If you can hear me, make a sound!”
A Spanish team left when two of their dogs failed to pick up any signs of survivors.
But the New Yorkers didn’t give up. “We’re gonna keep on looking,” FDNY Lt. Tom Donnelly assured Noel’s sister, Rochelle Noel, 26, of Boston, at the scene.
Word quickly spread of the missing Brooklyn woman — and six more members of the team were diverted from their assignment just 500 feet away to balance themselves amongst the pile of broken cinder blocks to help the family.
The rescuers used snake cams, which allowed them to survey the tight spaces, and peered into other crevices in the rubble.
Nothing.
The crew finally called it quits and made their way up the hill where the rest of the New York squad was saving the life of Mario Jean Voltaire, a 45-year-old security guard, who cared for a seven-story apartment building.
NYPD Detectives James Coll, 37, and Randy Miller, 38, spent 3½ hours before pulling the father of two free.
“The best feeling you have is when you see fingers sticking out through the hole and you reach in and someone shakes your hand,” Miller said with a proud gleam.
“[Voltaire] was saying, ‘Thank you!’ to us the whole time.”
The rescue of the Haitian security guard was greeted by applause from a handful of his countrymen, who stood around to witness the miracle.
As for Diana Noel, “We tried,” said an emotional Bershad, sweat dripping from his brow and dust covering his blue uniform.
Rochelle Noel stared at the concrete debris that swallowed her parents and sister. “They did, they tried the best that they could.” she said of the rescue crews.