‘I ate ketchup and cheese’: 12-year-old Venezuelan survives 32-hour earthquake

Carina Blanco is about to start the driving class she teaches when the earth starts shaking. As the shaking grew stronger, she grabbed her bag and ran outside with the others.

“When I realized the magnitude of that, I started screaming, ‘Baby, baby,’ I sat in my car and drove as fast as I could,” Karina said.

Her only daughter, Fabiana, 12, was in their home on June 24 when two powerful earthquakes rocked Venezuela. The second earthquake, with a magnitude of 7.5, was one of the country’s strongest in a century.

Carina couldn’t believe her eyes when she arrived at her building in Carabaleda, in the northern state of La Guaira. “I could see a building, then the gap where my building stood, then another building.”

Fabiana was in her mother’s bedroom in a first-floor apartment in a 10-story building when she felt the earthquake. She ran into the kitchen, and grabbed the table, as the walls collapsed around her. She was thrown to the ground.

“I saw things shaking, falling, breaking, and then the walls cracked. The wall separating my apartment from my friend’s collapsed. At that moment, I thought I was going to die. I’m not going to survive. There’s no one to save me,” Fabiana said.

From then on, 32 hours of ordeal began.

Outside the collapsed building, Karina saw half of her daughter’s bed sticking out of the rubble.

“I was running from one end of this complex to the other end. My daughter is dead. I didn’t know what to do,” Karina said.

All is quiet for Fabiana under the demolished building. Caught in all directions by debris, she lay face down as the ceiling almost touched her face.

“I’m a very anxious and claustrophobic person. But I don’t know why, a strange calmness came over me. Maybe my mind was in a state of shock,” she said.

A moment later, a nurse who works as a babysitter starts calling her upstairs neighbors to see if anyone can hear her. Fabiana responded.

“She calmed down and told me everything would be fine,” Fabiana said.

Six hours after the earthquake, around midnight, the nurse was saved. She told the volunteers who pulled her out that a girl named Fabiana was alive inside.

“I gave my hand to God to give me the strength to start a new life without Fabiana. Then someone told me, ‘Your daughter is alive,'” Karina said.

She ran into the building screaming her son’s name into the gap in the rubble.