Port-au-Prince, Haiti (CNN)
Thousands of people were pushing for rescue
efforts in Haiti to continue Sunday, after a
24-year-old man was pulled alive from the ruins
on Saturday, 11 days after the nation's
devastating earthquake.
The
Haitian government says it will be switching
from a search and rescue operation to a search
and recovery mission.
But families of Americans who
were staying at the leveled Hotel Montana are
fighting that, and started an online petition
Saturday in an effort to continue search efforts
there "until all the survivors are accounted
for." As of Sunday morning, 2,395 people had
signed the petition and sent 6,216 messages to
the Senate, Congress and the White House, said
Sue Keller, a friend of a family whose relatives
are among the missing. The families hope to have
at least 5,000 signatures by Monday, she said.
The Haitian government has said
more than 111,000 people died in the January 12
quake, which registered 7.0 in magnitude. But on
Saturday, a French rescue team was able to save
one life as they pulled Wismond Jean-Pierre from
the rubble of the Hotel Napoli Inn in
Port-au-Prince.
According to his brother,
Jean-Pierre worked in the hotel's grocery store
and survived his week and a half in the rubble
by consuming cookies and beer. Dehydrated but
apparently without injury, Jean-Pierre was even
talkative as he was placed in an ambulance and
driven to a hospital.
Lt. Col. Christophe Renou, a
French rescuer briefly overcome with emotion,
called the three-hour effort "a miracle." Other
members of the team -- assisted by American and
Greek workers -- were seen weeping after
Jean-Pierre was freed.
Rescues like Jean-Pierre's, and
others that have happened in the week following
the disaster, sparked hope among families of the
missing. But the emotional rescue came on a day
when much of Haiti was mourning as operations
largely shifted from rescue to recovery, and the
country's president attended the funeral of an
archbishop who was one of the victims.
A Mexican rescue team had pulled
the body of 63-year-old Monsignor Joseph Serge
Miot from ruins near the national cathedral,
which he oversaw as archbishop of
Port-au-Prince. The cathedral was destroyed.
At the funeral, President René
Préval was asked to respond to criticism that he
has not shown strong public leadership and has
been largely unseen in the aftermath. "This is
not about politics today," he said.
CNN
iReport: Looking for loved ones in Haiti
The most recent death toll is
the worst caused by an earthquake since the 2004
Asian tsunami that resulted from a temblor, and
the second-highest death toll from an earthquake
in more than three decades, according to the
U.S. Geological Survey.
"Rescue teams continue to work
in Port-au-Prince, we continue to hope that they
will be able to find people still alive, but as
time passes, we must gradually shift our
resources from rescue to recovery," Nick
Birnback, spokesman for U.N. peacekeeping
operations, said Saturday.
International search teams have
rescued at least 132 people since the quake
struck, the U.N. said.
Birnback said the priority now
is to remove bodies and clean up affected areas
to avoid health hazards and the spread of
disease. He said the
United Nations will start bringing in
heavier equipment, which will allow teams to
move concrete and damaged homes.
More than 600,000 people have
also been left homeless in and around the
capital of Port-au-Prince, the U.N. Office for
the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.
Interactive map of where to find aid, hospitals
in Haiti
Meanwhile, up to 140 flights a
day are regularly arriving at the single-runway
Port-au-Prince airport, compared with 25 in the
immediate aftermath of the January 12 quake,
OCHA said Saturday. To relieve congestion at the
airport, humanitarian cargo is being moved to a
forward dispatch area at one end of the runway.
The Las Americas airport in
Santo Domingo, in neighboring Dominican
Republic, is starting to report congestion as it
becomes increasingly used as an alternative
airport, OCHA said. It will now be open
overnight to accommodate the extra traffic.
Those managing the land
transport of supplies from Santo Domingo will
need fuel, and OCHA said there is enough in
Haiti to last an additional 18 to 19 days. But
it said it expects no shortage of fuel because
supplies of fuel will be able to enter the port
during that time.
One concern with cross-border
traffic is the unauthorized departure of Haitian
children, OCHA said.
Charities and aid groups have
said in recent days that they are concerned
about the danger of child trafficking after the
earthquake. Groups including Save the Children
and World Vision have called for a halt to
adoptions, saying many children may appear to be
orphaned but have simply been separated from
their families.
"If children must be evacuated
from Haiti because their protection needs cannot
be met in country, the evacuation must be
carefully documented, the children must be
registered with the proper authorities and all
efforts must be made to reunify them with family
before any adoption proceedings are considered,"
the U.S.-based Women's Refugee Commission said.
The number of
unaccompanied children needing support is
greater than the capacity to respond, OCHA said.
Authorities are working with unaccompanied
children who are being released from hospitals,
it said.