A Tale of Two Rescues: American at Hotel Lives, Haitian in Apartment Dies

Jan. 16, 2010— -- A lot of Haitians are wondering why so many Americans seem to be getting rescued, and not so many Haitians.

On the one hand, there is the Hotel Montana, which was one of Haiti's nicest hotels, filled with westerners.

On Friday, USAID rescue squads from Fairfax, Va., brought out two more survivors from the Hotel Montana, the latest in a string of rescues from the hotel's ruins.

The two men -- a Haitian and an American, Dan Woolley, 39 -- were in separate elevator cars talking to each other through a wall.

According to a rescue worker, the American was saying, "Get her done. Get her done."

They got it done.

After three harrowing days, Woolley's wife, Christy, was reunited with him at a hospital Friday night in Miami.

"He's just bruised and swollen, and his eyes are sunken, but he's alive," she said. "He made it. He made it."

What happened to Maude Carmel Dorvil was a different story. When her Port-au-Prince apartment collapsed, she was trapped.

Her son, Charles, back in New York, was able to reach her by cell phone Thursday morning after two days of constant trying.

"She said, 'I'm under the house, I have two floors on top of me and I can't feel my legs, I'm hurt, I'm thirsty. Son, I'm dying,'" he said. "So when she said that, I said, 'Don't say anything, dont say anything. I'm going to do the best I can do to try and help you out, I promise you.'"

Then, the phone went dead.

Charles Dorvil pleaded for help on an American radio program, but it didn't work.

Neighbors said Maude Dorvil was pulled from the rubble eventually. Her leg seemed broken and she was bruised up, but there was no hospital to take her to. She died of her injuries, the locals said.