Rescued After Eleven Days

Rescuers could hear knocking and finally managed to free the trapped man:

A 24-year-old man has been rescued alive from the rubble of a ruined hotel in Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince, 11 days after the earthquake. It came hours after Haiti's government declared a formal end to the search for survivors. Onlookers cheered as Wismond Exantus - smiling and apparently in a good condition - emerged on a stretcher from what remains of the Napoli Inn Hotel. He later told reporters that soft drinks and snacks had kept him going.

It took two-and-a-half hours for the rescue of Wismond Exantus to take place.It might never happened, had not a member of his family approached a Greek journalist on the street and said they had heard noises coming from underneath a building.The Greek journalist said he also heard the noises, and approached a Greek rescue team. They then went into operation in combination with French and American teams, and pulled the man free from the rubble.
As he was gingerly put on a stretcher and carried towards a waiting ambulance, Wismond Exantus smiled. He didn't say anything but he was, if not totally unharmed, clearly in a very good state of health.

"I survived by drinking Coca-Cola and I ate some little tiny things," Mr Exantus, who worked in the hotel's grocery store, told news agency AFP from his bed in a French field hospital.
"Every night I thought about the revelation that I would survive," he was quoted as saying. Greek, French and US rescue teams were involved in the operation to bring him out of the remains of the hotel. A French rescue worker, Lt Col Christophe Renou, described his survival as "a miracle". He said rescuers had managed to get water to him while they worked to dig him out.

Lt Col Renou said the man had probably been helped by the fact that the 5-6m (16-20ft) of debris above him was largely wood, rather than concrete. He said the man had told his rescuers that another four people were trapped with him but that they had stopped moving a couple of days ago. Some Haitians have objected to the announcement that search-and-rescue operations are to end - and the discovery of Mr Exantus might lend weight to their argument.