Compassion International employee Dan Woolley made a near-fatal move when he switched hotels in Haiti last January. With Jennifer Schuchmann, Woolley tells the story of his rescue after being trapped for 65 hours when the earth shook Jan. 12, 2010, in Unshaken: Rising From the Ruins of Haiti’s Hotel Montana (978-0-310-33097-4, $22.99, Zondervan).

It was only Woolley’s second day in the country, which he was visiting with a colleague to record stories of Compassion’s work, when 230,000 people were killed in the 7.0 earthquake. He had planned to stay in a different hotel, but was forced to move when his hotel reservation was switched. The relief agency worker suffered serious head and leg injuries when the quake struck—and suffered the loss of a colleague, who was killed instantly. 

With two young boys at home—and wife Christy prone to depression—Woolley did everything he could to survive, treating his injuries with the help of a first-aid iPhone app and employing survival techniques he had learned from watching Bear Grylls’ Man vs. Wild.

Woolley was able to pray with others beneath the rubble and shared the gospel with a Haitian survivor in the elevator next to the one in which Woolley was trapped.

While some of the others were pulled out of the hotel, Woolley seemed to have been forgotten by his would-be rescuers, but eventually a search-and-rescue team freed him.

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