Quake Survivors' Selflessness
Stories of resilience and selflessness among survivors are emerging from the ruins of the earthquake that devastated Haiti Tuesday. Grateful to be alive, their thoughts have turned to others.
The wife of a former CBS News producer who was working with a Christian aid group when their home came down on her is back in the United States and safe, but says she wants to return to Haiti.
A Haitian child says her country is beautiful and she doesn't want to leave it.
And an American volunteer who wound up losing part of a leg to quake-related injuries says her thoughts remain with the Haitian people.
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Jillian Thorp, wife of former "Early Show" producer Frank Thorp, was working for the Haitian Ministries for the Diocese of Norwich, Conn. in the Haitian capital of Port au Prince when the quake brought the Thorps' three-story home down on her. He raced in a panicked, six-hour drive from 100 miles away to help get her out -- and worked with others for an hour to end her ten-hour ordeal, literally lifting her out from where she was.
On "The Early Show" Friday, Jillian, from Frank's parents' home in Alexandria, Va., told co-anchor Maggie Rodriguez she has mixed emotions. "I'm glad to be home," she said. "I feel lucky to be alive. And I've made it through a horrific experience with minor injuries, but I left a lot of people that I care about behind. And I'm dealing with that."
Jillian says, "After the building collapsed, we didn't know it had collapsed, we realized we didn't have any oxygen and I began to realize that I might die at age 23. But once we had co-workers show up and start digging us out, we were able to get oxygen and the fight for survival began. ... ... I was calm. For some reason, I did not panic. I don't know why, but I was able to hold it together and I was just accepting what was ever gonna happen, because I wasn't sure if we were going to make it."
But make it she did, and now she says she wants to return to Haiti.
Frank says he understand, even though, "It does seem crazy, but it was extremely hard to leave because,, even though you leave and there are bodies on the ground and there are buildings collapsed all around you, these people need so much help. And, I mean, the people that really dug Jillian out were her Haitian co-workers that left their collapsed houses and their families who had been injured to come and dig her out for seven hours. So, I mean, it does seem crazy, but it seems completely logical, because she's completely devoted to these people and she just wants to help."
Jillian had a message for the Haitian people: "We're not leaving you and we're with you."
Haitian survivor Christoph Philippe told "Early Show" weather anchor and features reporter Dave Price his "house is broken. I have no home." But he's making whatever food he can find for his family.
Twelve-year-old Caroline Jraham told Price, "Everywhere is the same everything is crashed. It is hard for people when they have nothing to start with." She says the constant sound of sirens doesn't matter because, "It's better like that. ... At least you know someone is getting help."
What makes it really hard, she says, is "t see this. Just to see families under houses that are crushed."
What does it mean for her country?
"I don't know. When you go through the streets you see dead people and some mothers with their kids dead next to them in plastic bags or anything you can find you wrap around the bodies."
But she says she wants to say. "Haiti is a beautiful country. I don't want to leave."
Christa Brelsford, of Anchorage, was volunteering at a literacy center in Port au Prince with her brother, Julian Brelsford, when the earthquake struck, and was buried under the rubble of a collapsed building. She was dug out by locals and taken to a United Nations camp, then flown to a Miami hospital to be treated.
In an e-mail to friends and family, Christa wrote: "I was trapped under a collapsing building. I am not in danger of dying, but my right leg was crushed below the knee and it may not survive. Otherwise I am fine."
Her right leg was amputated from the shin down.
Julian got out of the building before it came down.
And Christa's thoughts are with the Haitian people.
From her bed in the University of Miami-Jackson Memorial Hospital, Christa told Rodriguez she's "so happy I'm alive that I don't care about my foot at all."
Her prognosis, says Dr. Mark McKenney, a trauma surgeon and medical director of the Ryder Trauma Center at UM-Jackson, is "great. She's young she's healthy." In time, after another operation, he says, Christa should be able to walk again, with a prosthesis.
Do Christa and Julian want to return to Haiti?
"I'm definitely wanting to go back," Julian says. "There are so many people who haven't gotten the wonderful treatment that we did. But the young men from Haiti who helped us get out of there .. there are so many people who haven't had that opportunity, and we really want to see outpouring of support for these people."
