Frank Thorp Jr. was about 100 miles away when a 7.0 magnitude earthquake shook Port-au-Prince, Haiti, trapping his wife in a partially collapsed building there.
At first, he did not know that his wife, Jillian Thorp, 23, would become one of many people affected by the quake. Then the call came from his wife's cell phone. She and a coworker were trapped in the rubble when Haitian Ministries of the Diocese of Norwich ' mission house partially collapsed, she told him. Then, the phone cut off.
He drove all night to get to Jillian, the acting director of the organization, and Charles Dietsch, who has been working with the ministry.
"Frank was about an eight hour drive, on good conditions, away from the house, and as soon as it became clear what had happened in Port au Prince, he left and drove all night long to get there," Jillian's father, Clay Cook, said from his Connecticut home on Wednesday.
As Frank drove, workers started digging with their hands, Cook said. When Frank arrived, he helped pull him wife from the house, he told Matt Lauer on the Today Show.
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"It was such a relief to get her out,” he told the Today Show.
By the time Jillian was rescued, she had been trapped for 10 hours, he said. She is injured. She has major bruises and injured her leg, he said.
Dietsch broke a leg, Thorp said. Both are now at the Consulate Embassy, Cook said.
After her ordeal, Jillian is not racing to come home. She wants to stay and help.
“We were talking about getting her out and bringing her home and she said, ‘I can’t leave. I have to stay and help,’ and you have to think from her point of view the Haitians don’t get to go home,” Cook said.
The third person, the other woman rescued, is a Haitian native, Kyn Tolson, the mission’s development coordinator, told the Day of New London.
Thorp has been in Haiti since August, while Dietsch has been there only a few days, Tolson said.
Thorp is the daughter-in-law of retired Rear Adm. Frank Thorp, who retired in August as the Navy's chief information officer.
“It’s worse than a war zone,” Frank Thorp Jr. said. “It’s thousands and thousands of Haitians on the streets because their buildings and their houses have collapsed and they cannot live in them. … Every other building has collapsed.”
Haitian Ministries is accepting donations for relief at their Uncasville office. The group also has a satellite office in Middletown, called Haiti’s Back Porch.
People looking for information about family members can call the State Department at 888-407-4747.
Copyright AP - Associated Press
