Haiti and Chile Earthquakes

One Week After Haiti Quake, UN Photographer Helps Rescue Survivor

NEW YORK–(ENEWSPF)–20 January 2010 – Little did Logan Abassi, a United Nations photographer, imagine that he would help to save a life when he hit the streets of the Haitian capital to capture images of looters one week after the catastrophic earthquake struck the impoverished Caribbean country.

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Mr. Abassi, who works with the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), was trailing police officers who fired shots into the air to disperse a crowd looting a store yesterday. As he passed the rubble of the Haitian public telecommunications building, he was alerted to the possibility of a survivor trapped in the debris.

Scrambling to the top of the mountain of rubble, he heard a voice and saw the hand of Pierre-Louis Ronny, 43, a telecom worker, which was stuck between two concrete blocks.

Mr. Ronny said that he was hungry and thirsty, and as the photographer gave him water, he flagged down two trucks carrying Russian search-and-rescue teams on the street.

The telecom worker, who was working on the second floor of the building when the 7.0 magnitude tremor struck Port-au-Prince last Tuesday, was pulled from the rubble and given first aid by a Russian doctor.

Mr. Abassi lamented that the rescued man’s hand will likely be amputated, but expressed satisfaction that Mr. Ronny was able to call his wife to let her know he was alive before being transported to a hospital for care.

 

Source: un.org

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