French and US firefighters and medics drilled away the concrete slabs that buried her then ground their way through the steel door that protected but also imprisoned her when Port au Prince was hit by a catastrophic earthquake.

Five days after a disaster that killed tens of thousands of people, a far smaller number of victims who were lucky enough to have been trapped with an open airway are still clinging to life. But time is running out for them.

"It's already remarkable that she's alive and has so much energy," said emergency medic Denis Larger during the rescue. "Sadly, a concrete beam has crushed her right arm and we'll have to amputate it to get her out."

Medics and firefighters from French Martinique and a US rescue crew from Fairfax County Urban Search and Rescue, part of an international coalition of first responders, worked late into the night to save Marie-France.

They broke a dozen cutting disks as they sawed through the double reinforced steel door that shielded the 22-year-old under a collapsed row of shops.

The team worked in a hole they dug amid the still unstable buildings -- at one point a doctor was lowered in dangling by his feet -- under arc lights and the protection of a squad of Brazilian UN peacekeepers.

"She is someone who wants to live. She survived thanks to her mental strength, her physical condition and coolness in the rocks where she was that protected her from the intense heat," said Fire Commander Daniel Vigee.

The rescue began in the baking Caribbean noon but, as sunset infused the dust choked streets of the ruined capital with a pink glow, the task became more complicated.

The rest of the city, bereft of electricty, was already pitch black when a round of tired applause greeted Marie-France's anaesthetised form being carried to a delivery truck pressed into service as a paramedic ambulance.

From there, armed French Gendarmes loaded her onto a pick-up truck and rushed her through the darkness to an Israeli field hospital.

The people of Port au Prince, eager for the start of large-scale food handouts, are often critical of the international aid operation that has shuddered chaotically into action in the aftermath of Tuesday's quake.

But the search and rescue effort has been impressive, with brave and skilled teams from more than a dozen countries fanning out far ahead of the US military forces still massing at the airport to save as many lives as possible.

Nevertheless, in a catastrophe of this scale there must be many more people still trapped and facing slow death by starvation in the dark.

A hundred metres (yards) further down the street where the French and American teams were working, another US crew was talking to another survivor.

Voices had been heard on the wreckage of the upper storeys of a commercial building, twisted at crazy angles and hanging over the street.

Local people believed that four people were trapped there, and Bertrande Eveward thought her 26-year-old son Junior was among them.

"My son is there," she declared, watching the beefy firefighters of the Los Angeles County Search and Rescue scale the rubble left by the total collapse of a neighbouring block to investigate the sounds.

Overcome with emotion, she fluttered between French, English and Creole as she tried to tell the story of her family's achievements, as if invoking their successful history would stave off future sadness.

Her eldest son Bertrand Paul is serving with the US military in Japan, while Joey and his sister Rebecca live with their father Jean-Baptiste in Boston. Junior was in Haiti when the block collapsed on Tuesday at 5:00pm.

Bertrande tried to comfort Junior's wife, a slight girl with tightly-braided hair who appeared to be in shock. She tried to explain what had happened, but couldn't find words and, as tears welled up, she turned away.

Hauling equipment up to the search site, Fire Captain Miguel Garcia had news. There was at least one person left alive, but it was not Junior.

"We've confirmed that there's one female. She's talking to us," he said. "She indicates that there's more, but we can't hear them. We've seen a hand, but they can't get out from where they're at."

The search continues, but anyone still in the rubble will have to be strong to survive.

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