NEED TO KNOW
A 12-year-old girl survived 32 hours trapped under rubble after the Venezuela earthquakes in June
She stayed conscious by eating ketchup and cheese while rescuers struggled to reach her in the collapsed building
A volunteer named Viktor ultimately located her and helped lead efforts to free her in a viral rescue moment
A young girl became trapped under rubble after rare back-to-back earthquakes struck Venezuela earlier this month, and ate condiments to survive as her mother gave up hope she would be rescued. Then, a stranger heard her call.
On Wednesday, June 24, Venezuela was hit by a 7.2-magnitude earthquake, followed shortly after by a 7.5-magnitude earthquake believed to be the country’s biggest in more than a century. When the tremors first started, Karina Blanco was about to start teaching an exercise class and her 12-year-old daughter Fabiana was at home, according to the BBC.
Karina said she “started screaming, ‘my daughter, my daughter,’ ” and rushed home to her first-floor apartment in the town of Caraballeda “as fast as I could” upon realizing just how serious the natural disaster was, the BBC reported. When she got there, she said she “could see one building, then a gap where my building stood, and then another building.”
At the moment, Karina recalled to the outlet, “I was running from one end of the complex to the other screaming, ‘She’s dead. My daughter is dead’. I didn’t know what to do.”
Her daughter was trapped under the rubble of their building, and stayed there for 32 hours until she was freed. The viral video of her rescue has become a silver lining in Venezuela amid the devastation caused by the back-to-back quakes, according to the BBC.
When the earthquakes hit, Fabiana had run to the kitchen when the building collapsed, trapping her with debris on all sides, with the ceiling nearly brushing against her face.
“I saw things shaking, falling, breaking, and then the walls cracked,” the 12-year-old recalled to the BBC. “The wall separating my apartment from a friend’s collapsed. At that moment, I thought, ‘I’m going to die. I won’t survive this. No-one is going to rescue me.’ ”
While stuck, Fabiana spoke with a caretaker for one of her neighbors who became stuck. The nurse was later rescued after about six hours, and told volunteers searching the rubble that the 12-year-old was alive. For her mother, who said she had already “surrendered to God asking for strength to begin a new life” without the young girl, hope was renewed.
She ran back into the debris, yelling, but her daughter heard no response. Later, firefighters called out to her, but also heard nothing. These first responders, Karina told the outlet, said “nothing could be done, and they left.”
“I had a sinking thought that maybe she had suffocated to death or had suffered a heart attack,” she continued of her daughter. “Then a volunteer came up to me and asked me what was going on. He — Viktor — was my hero.”
Fabiana was able to hear the “hero” as he shouted out to her, and he heard her cries, as well. After he shared the news with her mother, she said she “turned to everyone and screamed, ‘my daughter is alive.’ ” Still, the “firefighters who were there said it was impossible to get through, and they left,” Karina told the BBC.
A new wave of first responders arrived hours later, but could not reach the 12-year-old, either. But Viktor stayed, and continued to reassure the trapped girl, who said she’d been surviving off of pantry goods to stay “conscious.”
“For some reason, I had hope and faith,” she told the BBC. “One of my legs was bent in a painful position, and I moved some of the rubble so I could straighten it out. While doing that I got scrapes and cuts, but I found a bottle of ketchup and some grated cheese. That’s what kept me conscious.”
Collapsed buildings in Caraballeda, Venezuela, on July 3
Credit: ZINA DESMAZES / AFP via Getty
Eventually, by the light of cars and motorcycles — and with the assistance of people Karina begged to help — rescuers were able to make a hole big enough that Fabiana could peer through and, according to the BBC, a video of the moment went viral.
About 32 hours after the quakes had first struck, the hole was finally big enough for Fabiana to escape. When she emerged, she recalled to the BBC, “I saw my family, I saw the building completely collapsed, and it felt like it wasn’t real, like it was a TV series.”
She made it out with minor injuries — including a fracture in her left foot — and was one of three people rescued alive out of the approximately 50 people who lived in her building, according to the BBC. But she has continued to feel the mental effects of the experience. “Initially I was scared to lie down, especially on my back, as I would remember the time I spent in the rubble,” she told the outlet.
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The 12-year-old is now living with her grandmother, and photos shared by the BBC show her smiling wide as her mother plants a kiss on her cheek.
As of Monday, July 6, at least 3,535 people have died, and another 16,740 have been injured, Reuters reported, citing government officials. Another 18,000 have been left homeless by the devastating natural disaster, the outlet reported.
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