‘From earthquake rubble to the top of the Dolomites’Image source, Getty ImagesImage caption, Ralf Etienne celebrates at the Winter ParalympicsByKatie FalkinghamBBC Sport Senior Journalist in CortinaPublished32 minutes agoFor eight hours, Ralf Etienne waited. Buried upside down, his left leg was trapped by the rubble of a building which collapsed during a 7.0 magnitude earthquake that devastated Haiti in 2010.But in a measure of the man, he was not thinking of himself in that moment.”I decided that if I survived this tragedy, I would live a life to serve people,” Etienne reported, external.
He was eventually rescued – and pushed in a wheelbarrow for a day to reach a hospital.
It was a further week before Etienne, then 20, was seen by a doctor and had his leg amputated.
More than 200,000 people died in the Haiti earthquake, a disaster that destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure and economy.
At the time, Etienne was a successful entrepreneur. In his home country, he had built what he called “a media empire” – including his own magazine, radio show and production company – by the age of 16.
But the earthquake changed his life’s mission. After travelling to the USA with an American orthopaedic surgeon he met in Haiti to receive a prosthetic leg, he moved in with that doctor and enrolled at college in Indiana.
Over the following years he would frequently return to Haiti to carry out humanitarian work, including distributing 40,000 pairs of glasses for those who could not access eye care, helping to repair roofing on homes destroyed by Hurricane Matthew in 2016, and supporting health care initiatives.
Back in the US, he trained as an investment banker, wanting to focus on “impact investment”.
“I have a drive to show the world a different side of my country, a positive side, a resilient side,” reported the 36-year-old.
