Woman speaks out after surviving Venezuelan earthquake with newborn
A woman is speaking out after she and her 18-day-old son were rescued following a pair of powerful earthquakes that struck Venezuela on Wednesday last week.
Dayana Patiño and her son Juan David were pulled from the rubble of their collapsed apartment building in the early morning hours on Friday, after being trapped there for more than 30 hours. Rescuers were able to get water to the infant by sliding a straw through a pipe amid the rubble, Patiño said.
"The one who gave me the strength not to fall into despair was my son," Patiño told ABC News in Spanish. "I kept saying, 'As long as he was alive, I was going to be alive.'"
Patiño said she and her son were inside their eighth floor apartment when the back-to-back earthquakes hit, causing their building to collapse. At the time, Patiño said she was changing the baby's diaper, and he ended up landing on her chest after they both fell.
Juan David's father, Gerson Trujillo, also survived the earthquakes. He wasn't in the apartment at the time, he said, but he was able to rally neighbors to help him dig his family out of the rubble.
Patiño said she sustained a broken knee and other injuries as a result of the building collapse, but the parents said Juan David appears to be uninjured, with not even a scratch -- an outcome they credit to the mother and son falling onto a copy of the Bible, by chance.
Rescue crews are still racing to find and save survivors who remain trapped under collapsed buildings and debris in the hard-hit northern city of La Guaira, where nearly 200 buildings are estimated to have collapsed, as well as other regions devastated by the 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude quakes.
More than 20 countries have sent rescue teams to Venezuela so far, with rescuers working around the clock alongside dogs and drones to locate missing people.
A U.S. team rescued a 51-year-old woman in La Guaira after she had been trapped for more than 10 hours. In the town of Caraballeda, rescuers saved a 21-year-old man who had been buried for approximately 106 hours.
As rescue efforts stretch into a sixth day, the death toll continues to rise, with more than 1,900 confirmed deaths and more than 10,500 injured so far.
Among those killed include three Americans and at least 12 Americans remain missing in the earthquakes' aftermath.
