 Gerry Harvieux
Staff reporter
Laying trapped underneath the rubble of her Médecins Sans Frontières home base in Haiti, Danielle Trepanier thought for certain she was going to die; but that didn’t mean she was ready to give into it. In what can only be described as an unimaginable focus of will power and self control, she began her 24-hour survival ordeal by concentrating on her breathing.
“Well, I thought I was going to die. Of course I thought I was going to die. But I was just willing myself to take care of myself as much as possible, to concentrate on my breathing,” she said Monday from her sister’s home in Stoney Point where she has been recuperating since arriving home Sunday night. “I’m very lucky. In my bad luck, I’ve been very lucky. I cheated death.”
Working in Haiti as a logistics administrator with MSF since July 2009, 35-year-old Danielle had been sick for three days and was resting in her second-floor room of the MSF staff house adjacent to the United Nations building when the earthquake struck Haiti last Tuesday. Two colleagues who were exiting the house when the earthquake stuck didn’t believe there was any way she could have survived.
Initial reports from MSF to Danielle’s sister Monique in Vancouver were not hopeful.
‘The report from MSF, to Monique, from the people who escaped the same house that Danielle was in, who had seen the house collapse, knowing she was in it, and judging by the that state of the house, which was flat, was that there was no hope,” explained her sister Carole, who was following the story and awaiting word about Danielle from her home in Stoney Point. “They weren’t really wanting to open that window because it just didn’t look possible. At that point we didn’t have any hope really.”
Unwilling to deliver the news to their mother over the phone, Carole and her sister Nicole went together to their mother’s house at 1:30 am.
“Of course she hadn’t slept,” Carole said. “She knew; she just had that feeling all day. It was also the 14th anniversary of my dad’s (Felix Trepanier) death and she was kind of uptight. So she knew when she saw us at the door, she just knew it. What else are her two daughters going to be standing at her doorstep for at that hour of the morning? And she said ‘is Danielle... is it over?’ and I told her ‘That’s what they say. That’s what we've been told’. It was a long night of grieving.”
But while her mother and sisters back home were grieving her loss, Danielle, trapped by rubble under the three-story building, was working methodically to free herself, and calling out to let anyone know she was still alive.
“I fell in a fetal position but I realized everything was intact, even though things were trapped. One arm was really trapped and my chest was really trapped, which was affecting my breathing, on top of all the dust and lack of oxygen right after the collapse. So it was the first hour or two hours that I didn’t think I would make it at all,” she said. “Then it was just telling myself a lot of people live through earthquakes, a lot of people are found buried alive. The important thing was to remain as rationale and logical as possible. I was saying my goodbyes to people and at the same time was telling myself I’m going to get through this.”
Relaying the story her sister told her after arriving home, Carole explained that Danielle began to calm herself and try and free her trapped limbs.
“Basically, she managed her stress very well. They do really good training for situations where you have to be able to control you’re breathing, control stress, and basically work through a process of okay, what can I do, and focus on one step at a time,” Carole said. “She was having difficulty breathing because of the weight on her chest, and there was all the dust. Once she got (her breathing) under control she managed to shove all her weight back to dislodge her arm, and it worked. She tried to give little shoves initially, because she didn’t want other stuff to fall on her. But she knew after an hour that if that arm didn’t come free things wouldn’t be good. After that it was one hour at a time. Once her arm was free she rested, then focused on getting her head released. Then she rested a little bit more and then she was able to move, just in very tight quarters, and when she finally released her leg she knew she could rest. She said she slept for probably about four hours at that point.”
It was 8 am the next morning when Monique received another call from the head of Haitian mission for MSF that he had heard Danielle’s voice at some point during the night. But they still didn’t know what shape she was in. While she was alive at that point, they feared that she may be suffering terribly and might not make it out alive. They contacted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, by both email and phone. They had Danielle’s location, an actual address and confirmation that she was still alive.
“They did send someone from the Ministry of Foreign affairs on site that morning and they came back with a report at noon that they had confirmed it was her and she was still alive,” Carole said, her voice thick with emotion. “From that point forward, my sister (Monique) and her husband spent all their time on the phone contacting every possible human being that had any kind of pull. Through friends and contacts of theirs they eventually spoke to (Minister of National Defense) Peter McKay and he assured us, the first military plane to land they would send the first troops to Danielle’s address to work on freeing her.”
In the meantime though, two of Danielle’s colleagues got her signal, and she knew they had heard her. “At that point I was beyond myself with happiness,” Danielle said.
By this time, four MSF drivers and an unknown bystander had already begun working to free Danielle, risking their own lives to dig her out.
“I have so much admiration for the guys who pulled me out,” Danielle said.
“They put their own lives at risk to dig her from the rubble,” Carole said. “She was begging them to go get helmets, go get gloves. Of course they didn’t. They kept digging until they managed somehow to tunnel her out.”
The call with the news of her rescue came shortly afterward to her sister Monique on the west coast who immediately called her family in Stoney Point.
“Mom had just gone outside to get a breath of fresh air when the call came in with the miraculous news,” Carole said. “I ran outside to tell her everything was great and rushed back in.”
There was a lone voice mail message from Danielle herself telling her mom she was okay and to “get off the phone, I’m trying to call you”, left while her mother and sister shared the good news. Then, there was more waiting to find out how she was physically and when she would be home.
Once freed from the collapsed house, MSF personnel transported her to an MSF off |