Rescuers in Haiti who are still searching for survivors were quite surprised today when they found a 16 year old French girl who had somehow managed to stay alive, despite being buried in rubble for 15 days since the earthquake. Darlene Etienne was trapped in a collapsed home near St. Gerard University where she was a student.

The fact that Darlene managed to stay alive for 15 days without sustenance is beyond belief to doctors, who said they cannot explain how she survived. The rescue team said she may have had access to a little drinking water, and that Darlene mumbled something about having a little Coca-Cola with her in the rubble.

Etienne is stable, drinking water and eating yogurt and mashed vegetables, said Dr. Evelyne Lambert, who has been treating the girl on the French Navy hospital ship Sirocco, anchored off the shore of Port-au-Prince.

Dr. Lambert says that Darlene has a 90% chance of survival.

"We cannot really explain this because that's just (against) biological facts," Lambert told a news conference. "We are very surprised by the fact that she's alive. ... She's saying that she has been under the ground since the very beginning on the 12th of January so it may have really happened — but we cannot explain that."

Her age may have had a great deal to do with her survival (young people are more resilient), in addition to her hydration levels at the time of the earthquake.

Darlene had just begun studies at St. Gerard when the disaster struck, trapping dozens of students and staff in school buildings, hostels and nearby homes. Her cousin Jocelyn A. St. Jules says, "we thought she was dead."

Nearly half a month after the earthquake, neighbors heard a faint voice calling out for help from a private home that had been destroyed. Authorities were called and brought in the French civil response team, who began searching. They heard her voice and spotted a little bit of dust-covered black hair in the rubble. After clearing away a bit of the rubble, they saw a woman, alive - but just barely.

Darlene was the first rescue since Saturday, when a man was pulled from a hotel grocery store having survived on soda, beer and vending machine food. The man was trapped not by the original Jan 12 earthquake, but by a smaller aftershock that leveled the hotel he was working in.

What an incredible story, and what a remarkably brave young woman she is.

via MSNBC