Haiti's "Miracle Man" Tells Survival Story

Man Who Woke up After Quake Finding Himself Buried Under Rubble Shares How He Survived for 10 Days

(CBS) He's being called miracle man.

Twenty-one-year-old Emanuel Buteau survived 10 days under the wreckage of his collapsed apartment building. He was saved Friday night by an Israeli rescue team and revived at an Israeli field hospital, reports CBS News Correspondent Bill Whitaker.

"You know your survival is being called a miracle?" Whitaker asked Buteau.

"It's a big miracle!" Buteau's translator said. "He was praying to God and he was saying, 'God, if it's your will I will die. If it's you will, I will survive.'"

Emanuel said he was knocked unconscious in the quake and woke up entombed in a cramped, dark air pocket. He says he prayed and lot and cried a lot and thought he would die there.

"How did you survive?" Whitaker asked Buteau.

"There were times he feels like he will pass away and he had to pee and drink his pee," Buteau's translator said.

Doctors say having some fluids and his spirit kept him alive.

"Miracles can happen," said Dr. Alon Grossman, who works with an Israeli medical team in Haiti. "He needed basic medical treatment, but overall he was in very good condition at the beginning."

Buteau's mother had returned to the collapsed apartment to find his body for burial. Trapped inside, he heard her speak of him in the past tense. He called her name, and she called the rescue team, the same team that saved a little boy and his sister two days earlier.

"'If you save one man,' we say in Hebrew, 'you save the whole world,' and this is one of the main reasons that we are here," the team's Col. Gili Shenhal said.

Buteau's attending physician told the miracle man he will be given food and then he can go home. Buteau lost so much weight, he needs a rope to keep his pants up, but he says that is a small price to pay for the miracle of life.


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