French rescuers pull girl from quake debris

Haitian government gets one penny of each US quake aid dollar.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — French rescuers pulled a teenage girl from the rubble of a home near the destroyed St. Gerard University on Wednesday, a stunning recovery 15 days after an earthquake devastated the city.

Darlene Etienne, near death from dehydration and a broken leg, was rushed to a French military field hospital and then to a hospital ship, groaning through an oxygen mask with her eyes open in a lost stare.

“She’s alive!” said paramedic Paul Francois-Valette, who accompanied her into the hospital.

Her family said Etienne, 17, had just started studying when the disaster struck, trapping dozens of students and staff in the rubble of school buildings, hostels and homes.

Neighbors who heard a voice coming from the rubble of a private home down the road from the university called authorities who brought in the search and rescue team Wednesday.

Rescuer Claude Fuilla walked along the crumbled roof, heard the voice and saw a little bit of dust-covered black hair in the rubble. He said he cleared some debris, managed to reach the young woman and could see she was alive.

The team then dug out a hole big enough to give Etienne some oxygen and water. She had a very weak pulse, but within 45 minutes they managed to remove her, covered in dust, from what appeared to be the collapsed porch area. But, a neighbor later said he believed she was trapped in the shower room, where she might have had access to water.

Authorities say it is rare for anyone to survive more than 72 hours without water.

French Lt. Col. Christophe Renou said his team would probably return today with radar equipment to look for other possible survivors.

The last previous confirmed rescue of someone trapped by the initial quake occurred Saturday, 11 days later, when a man was extricated from the ruins of a hotel grocery store.

Two weeks after President Barack Obama announced an initial $100 million for Haiti earthquake relief, U.S. government spending on the disaster has nearly quadrupled to $379 million, the U.S. Agency for International Development announced Wednesday. That’s about $1.25 each from everyone in the United States.

But, less than a penny of each dollar is going in the form of cash to the Haitian government, according to an Associated Press review of relief efforts.

Each American dollar roughly breaks down like this: 42 cents for disaster assistance, 33 cents for U.S. military aid, nine cents for food, nine cents to transport the food, five cents for paying Haitian survivors for recovery efforts, just less than one cent to the Haitian government, and about half a cent to the Dominican Republic.

The U.S. government money is part of close to $2 billion in relief aid flowing into Haiti — almost all of it managed by organizations other than the Haitian government.

Relief experts say it would be a mistake to send too much direct cash to the Haitian government, which was already unstable before the quake and routinely included on lists of the world’s most corrupt countries.

The AP review of federal budget spreadsheets, procurement reports and contract databases shows the vast majority of U.S. funds going to established and tested providers including the U.N. World Food Program, the Pan American Health Organization and nonprofit groups such as Save The Children.