Petersen Hilan, a Port-au-Prince high school senior, stood in a cement house with his family when the earth began to shake. Huge cinders began to tumble down on family members. His 4-year-old sister, Carmel, was in danger.

Hilan braved the concrete shower to grab his sister and put her outside unharmed but Hilan wasn't as lucky. He was trapped by falling concrete that trapped and shattered his foot.

With that sacrifice for his sister, Hilan joined a growing army of Haitian amputees injured during their rescues on the earthquake-ravaged island nation.

They face long rehabilitations and uncertain futures in a land where even those that have use of all their limbs will have a tough time surviving as the perilous rainy season approaches.

Hilan's story underscores both the promise and the despair that is post-earthquake Haiti.

Hilan and others in his situation will be forced to draw on internal reserves of strength and perseverance that most people would never be able to tap. But one has to wonder how they will make it physically and mentally.

"I hate having to ask people to do things for me now," Hilan told the Associated Press in an interview.

He won't be alone.

Physical labor plays a larger role in Haitian society than in other more-developed countries. Men walked long distances for back-bending employment; many women even inside the capital city still clean clothes on a washboard by hand.

In time, some amputees will be lucky enough to be fitted for prosthetics but those numbers will be few in the immediate aftermath of the quake in the poorest nation in the hemisphere.

Estimates vary wildly between 4,000 and 50,000 of the number of Haitians who have gone through amputations since the earthquake, some under the most primitive medical conditions imaginable.

And those are the lucky ones, since other quake survivors are living with badly shattered limbs and infections while waiting to have amputation surgery completed.

A U.S.-based group Healing Hands for Haiti provides help for amputees and others in need of medical aid. A small donation for their work would seem to be the least an able-bodied person could do.