"I saw things shaking, falling, breaking, and then the walls cracked... I thought, 'I'm going to die. I won't survive this.'"
A 32-Hour Ordeal Beneath the Rubble
On 24 June, two earthquakes struck Venezuela. The second, a magnitude 7.5 tremor—one of the strongest the country has experienced in a century—caused a 10-story building in Caraballeda, La Guaira state, to collapse.
Trapped inside her first-floor apartment for 32 hours was a 12-year-old girl named Fabiana.
The Moment the Earth Shook
Fabiana was alone at home when the earthquakes began. As walls crumbled around her, she hid in the kitchen. The wall separating her apartment from a neighbor's collapsed, and she became trapped face-up under debris—the ceiling pressing so close it nearly touched her face.
Her mother, Karina Blanco, a spinning instructor, was leading a class when the shaking started. She immediately drove home.
"When I realised the magnitude of it, I started screaming 'my daughter, my daughter'. I sat in my car and drove as fast as I could."
Arriving at the scene, Karina saw her daughter's bed sticking out of the rubble. Her first thought was that Fabiana was dead.
A Voice from the Darkness
A nurse who lived in an upstairs apartment was also trapped in the collapse. Rescuers freed her after six hours, and she immediately told them that Fabiana was still alive.
Despite normally being anxious and claustrophobic, Fabiana described feeling a "strange calm" during her long wait.
"I saw things shaking, falling, breaking, and then the walls cracked... I thought, 'I'm going to die. I won't survive this.'"
The trapped nurse urged the young girl to stay calm.
The Rescue and the Reunion
Karina learned of her daughter's survival roughly six hours after the earthquake. She returned to the collapsed building and called out to Fabiana.
"I had surrendered to God asking for strength to begin a new life without Fabiana. And then someone told me, 'Your daughter is alive'."
The rescue operation lasted a total of 32 hours. When crews finally reached her, Fabiana was pulled from the debris alive, ending an agonizing wait that tested both a mother's faith and a young girl's courage.