A 12-year-old Venezuelan girl, Fabiana Blanco has recounted how she survived for 32 hours beneath the rubble of her collapsed apartment building by eating ketchup and grated cheese after two powerful earthquakes devastated parts of the country.
She was rescued in the early hours of Friday, July 3 after becoming trapped when a 7.5-magnitude earthquake struck Venezuela on June 24, causing her 10-storey apartment building in Caraballeda, La Guaira state, to collapse.
The schoolgirl said she believed she would not survive after the walls around her gave way while she was in her family’s first-floor apartment.
“I saw things shaking, falling, breaking, and then the walls cracked. At that moment, I thought, ‘I’m going to die. I won’t survive this. No-one is going to rescue me,'” she recalled.
As Fabiana remained buried beneath the debris, her mother, Karina Blanco, rushed from work to the apartment after feeling the earthquake.
“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,” Karina said.
When she arrived, she found that the apartment block had been reduced to rubble.
“I could see one building, then a gap where my building stood, and then another building,” she said, describing the scene.
Convinced her daughter had died, Karina said she ran through the wreckage in despair.
“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,” she said.
Hope was restored hours later when a nurse rescued from the collapsed building informed volunteers that Fabiana was still alive beneath the debris.
“I had surrendered to God asking for strength to begin a new life without Fabiana. And then someone told me, ‘Your daughter is alive,'” Karina recounted.
Meanwhile, trapped beneath the rubble, Fabiana said she remained calm despite being pinned down with little room to move.
“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,” she said.
With no mobile network available, Fabiana also recorded a video on her phone in the hope that someone would eventually see it.
“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,” she said in the recording.
After several unsuccessful rescue attempts, a volunteer identified as Viktor managed to establish contact with Fabiana, prompting another rescue operation.
As darkness fell, volunteers and emergency responders used vehicle headlights to illuminate the site while rescuers painstakingly chiselled through the concrete.
They eventually created an opening through which they could see Fabiana smiling a moment captured on video that has since gone viral across 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,” she said.
At around 2:00 a.m. local time on Friday, rescuers dug a tunnel wide enough to pull the 12-year-old from the rubble. She emerged with assistance before collapsing into her mother’s arms.
“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,” Fabiana said.
Apart from a fractured left foot, bruises and minor cuts, she escaped without life-threatening injuries.
The earthquakes have claimed at least 3,342 lives, with tens of thousands of people still unaccounted for.
Karina said only three of the nearly 50 residents who lived in their apartment building were rescued alive.
Now staying with her grandmother, Fabiana says she is gradually recovering but continues to relive the trauma of being trapped beneath the rubble.
“I was scared to lie down, especially on my back, because I remembered the time I spent under the debris,” she said.
Despite the devastation surrounding them, Karina remains grateful that her daughter survived.
“There is a great sadness outside 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. What more can a mother want? My daughter is alive,” she said.
