A New Zealand-born toddler has been found alive underneath the dead body of her father among the rubble of their hotel room in quake-devastated Haiti.
Two-year-old Alyahana Sanson-Rejouis is the youngest daughter of New Zealand woman Emily Sanson-Rejouis, who works for the United Nations in Haiti.
Emily Sanson-Rejouis, 37, made a distraught call to family here via satellite phone on Wednesday night, saying her French-Haitian husband, Emmanuel Sanson-Rejouis, and their three, young, New Zealand-born daughters were missing in Port-au-Prince and she was struggling to find help among the chaos.
Sanson-Rejouis' Auckland-based stepsister Caroline Larnach said on Thursday morning (NZ/AEDT) that Alyahana was found alive underneath her father's body.
She had one broken leg and the other might be broken, she told Radio Live. She said the family was hoping and praying the other two children Kofie-Jade, five, and Zenzie, three, were still alive. Earlier Sanson-Rejouis could hear at least one of her children crying beneath the rubble, Ms Larnach said. "She can still hear at least one of her children and she's trying to get them out," said told Radio New Zealand.
"She can hear the children, she can hear her children's cries, she can't get in, she can't speak to them." Larnach said her step-sister was desperate for help but there were was no available aid. "She's trying to do what she can physically but the building's collapsed."
Sanson-Rejouis was at work when the earthquake struck and was not harmed.
The hotel where the family where staying was one of many buildings destroyed on Tuesday local Haitian time by the 7.0 magnitude quake which left so much destruction that authorities have no idea how many lives have been claimed, other than to say it may be more than 100,000.
Sanson-Rejouis, who grew up in Nelson, in New Zealand's South Island, met her husband while working in eastern Europe for the UN, later shifting with the agency to Haiti.
