Haiti Quake Survivor Back in Colorado, Special Homecoming
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Updated: 9:54 AM Jan 25, 2010
Haiti Quake Survivor Back in Colorado, Special Homecoming
Dan Woolley arrived at Denver International Airport to a large crowd of family, friends and colleagues from Compassion International Tuesday night just after 9 p.m.
Posted: 5:00 AM Jan 20, 2010
Reporter: Mindy Stone/Lauri Martin
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Dan Woolley arrived at Denver International Airport to a large crowd of family, friends and colleagues from Compassion International Tuesday night just after 9 p.m.

Woolley had been receiving treatment in a Miami, FL hospital after being pulled from the rubble of a collapsed hotel in Haiti. His wife flew to Miami to reunite with him over the weekend.

Woolley had a gash on his leg that was eight inches long and three inches wide. "It went down to the bone," his wife, Christy, tells 11 News.

While he was under the rubble, he googled survival tips on his cell phone. That's when he stuffed his shirt down his pant leg to stop the bleeding. He began to pray. "God was with me right away. This was a huge event. I knew right away this was the difference between life and death. I could make it out or I might not, so I asked God to be with me. I begged God to please bring me back to my wife and to my boys," Dan Woolley tells 11 News at the airport.

Buried for two and a half days, Woolley says he happened to have his journal on him. He wrote goodbye letters to his wife and children. He also made funeral arrangements.

Woolley was working on a film project with David Hames in Haiti for Compassion International when the earthquake hit. "One moment we were walking up to our hotel room and the next, everything exploded. It felt like the ground was exploding. The walls were falling around us," he says.

The homecoming for Woolley is joyous, but bittersweet, because Hames is still missing in Haiti.

In her first television interview, Renee Hames says she is speaking out because she wants to make sure rescuers are looking in the right place for her husband, David.

He was last seen in the lobby of the Hotel Montana when the earthquake hit last Tuesday. His friend, Dan was able to crawl into an elevator shaft and was rescued three days later.

Renee is hoping her husband is in a safe place nearby. She says rescuers need to search 25 feet from the elevator shaft, the lobby and in pockets of the basement to find her husband.

"This is the hard part having to feel like you have to go on t.v. to explain something. I feel this is purposeful. He is there and people need to keep looking," said Renee Hames.

The Woolley family is holding on to hope that David will be found alive and Dan says they are still praying for a miracle.

Yellow ribbons are tied to all the mailboxes around the Woolley's home and a dozen balloons are waiting at the front door for Dan when he gets home late tonight.

His two young boys, Josh, 6, and Nathan, 3, have been at home with their grandparents since Dan's wife, Christy flew to Miami last Friday to reunite with him.

The family plans to have a quiet day at home on Wednesday.

Woolley says he would return to Haiti. It wouldn't be any time soon, but he says his work isn't done yet.

To see more pictures of Dan and David on their trip to Haiti, please click on the link below.

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