‘I ate ketchup and cheese’, says Venezuelan girl trapped under quake rubble for 32 hours

Karina Blanco was just about to start the spinning class she teaches when the earth began to shake. The tremors kept getting stronger, so she grabbed her bag and ran outdoors with everyone else.

“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,” said Karina.

Her only daughter, Fabiana, 12, was at their home when two powerful earthquakes rocked Venezuela within seconds of each other on 24 June. The second quake was one of the strongest tremors to hit the country in a century, at a magnitude of 7.5.

When Karina reached her building in Caraballeda, in northern La Guaira state, she could hardly believe her eyes. “I could see one building, then a gap where my building stood, and then another building.”

Inside their first-floor flat in the 10-storey building, Fabiana was in her mother’s bedroom when she felt the earthquakes. She ran into the kitchen, and was holding on to the counter, when the walls around her collapsed. She was thrown to the ground.

“I saw things shaking, falling, breaking, and then the walls cracked. 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,'” said Fabiana.

From then began an excruciating 32 hours.

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

“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,” said Karina.

Under the collapsed building everything had gone quiet for Fabiana. She was lying face up, trapped by rubble on all sides, with the ceiling almost touching her face.

“I’m someone who gets very anxious and claustrophobic. But I don’t know why, a strange calm came over me. Maybe my mind was in shock,” she said.

A little while later, a nurse who worked as a carer for her upstairs neighbours started calling out to see if anyone could hear her. Fabiana responded.

“She told me to stay calm and that everything would be alright,” said Fabiana.

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

“I had surrendered to God asking for strength to begin a new life without Fabiana. And then someone told me, ‘Your daughter is alive’,” said Karina.

She ran back to the building screaming into gaps in the debris, calling out her daughter’s name.

Through the pile of rubble, Fabiana could hear nothing.

“For some reason, I had hope and faith,” she said. “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.”

At dawn a group of Venezuelan firefighters came to the building. They went into the rubble and called out for Fabiana, but they heard nothing in response.

It was one of many moments that Karina swung from hope to despair.

“They told me 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. Then a volunteer came up to me and asked me what was going on. He – Viktor – was my hero,” she said.

Under the rubble Fabiana found her phone. There was no signal as mobile phone networks had gone down, but she decided to record a video of herself. She thought she would eventually be able to send it to her mother or someone who could help.

“Apartment – Ritamar Palace. There was a tremor and lot of rubble has fallen. There is no light. There is no-one to rescue us. I am alone. Many neighbours are trapped in the rubble. We need your help,” Fabiana can be seen saying in the video.

Meanwhile Viktor had clambered up the debris and began calling out to Fabiana. This time she heard him and replied. He told Karina.

“I turned to everyone and screamed, ‘my daughter is alive’,” said Karina. “People started arriving in droves, they started bringing tools. But the firefighters who were there said it was impossible to get through, and they left.”

A few hours later another group of firefighters arrived. They assured her they would bring Fabiana out. But they couldn’t manage to reach her, either.

Meanwhile, Viktor – the volunteer – kept going back to the spot from where he could speak to Fabiana to reassure her.

The firefighters called for a rescue group from Caracas – but by the time they arrived, it had become dark.

Karina ran around looking for torches and begged people to help. Seven motorcycles and a couple of cars pointed their headlights at the collapsed building.

Bit by bit they chiselled away, and finally they made a hole large enough that they could see Fabiana.

The video of this moment – of a smiling Fabiana peering through the hole – has gone viral in Venezuela.

“After so many hours of being shut in, I was filled with joy when I saw them. I realised I was going to be rescued,” said Fabiana.

At around 02:00 local time on Friday – 32 hours after the earthquakes struck – they managed to dig a tunnel wide enough to pull Fabiana out. She walked out of the debris with the support of the rescuers and collapsed into the arms of her mother.

“When I came out, I saw my family, I saw the building completely collapsed, and it felt like it wasn’t real, like it was a TV series,” said Fabiana.

Karina says that of the nearly 50 people who lived in her building, only three were rescued alive.

As of Sunday, 3,342 people were confirmed to have died in the quakes, with tens of thousands still missing.

Apart from a fracture in her left foot and a few scrapes and bruises, Fabiana suffered no other injuries.

She is now living with her grandmother.

“Initially I was scared to lie down, especially on my back, as I would remember the time I spent in the rubble,” she said.

In the streets just outside their current home in La Guaira, there are many collapsed buildings.

“There is a great sadness outside of this house. I feel so much pain when I think of my neighbours and my friends. It will take us a while to recover. But we will move on,” said Karina. “What more can a mother want? My daughter is alive.”

Additional reporting by Aakriti Thapar, Yesman Utrera, Maria Ines Calderon, Sanjay Ganguly