Rescuers crowd around a newborn wearing only a diaper and bundled in a striped blanket in a video that offers a glimmer of hope to families whose loved ones are still missing after Venezuela’s huge earthquakes last week.
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The footage published by The Associated Press showing 18-day-old Juan David and his mother Dayana Patino being saved from the rubble after their 32-hour ordeal in the northern coastal region of La Guaira was shared around the world this week.
“You are tough, Mami, you are tough,” a voice in Spanish tells a smiling Patino while she is still trapped under the rubble.
Speaking with British broadcaster BBC News from her hospital bed at a clinic in the Venezuelan capital Caracas on Sunday, Patino said she had been washing dishes in her eighth-floor apartment when the earthquakes hit.
“I don’t know how I didn’t let go of my baby because I was flying,” she said, adding: “I got crushed against furniture.”
She said she believed it was her determination to keep her baby safe that kept her alive.
“As long as he was alive, I was going to be alive,” she said.
The twin earthquakes, which struck Wednesday, devastated parts of Venezuela, with at least 1,719 people killed and tens of thousands still missing. Hopes were fading on Tuesday that survivors might still be found.
The United Nations said Monday it had agreed with Venezuelan authorities to procure 10,000 body bags in anticipation of the death toll rising further. It said officials had yet to confirm a figure for the missing, but UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher said an initial estimate of 50,000 unaccounted for was “terrifyingly plausible.”
According to the U.N., more than 5,000 people have also been injured and 12,000 displaced.
On Monday, Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodríguez said authorities continued “efforts to rescue survivors, which fills us with emotion and hope for their families and for our people.”
International teams have continued to flood into the country in recent days to boost the search efforts, with the critical 72-hour window for rescuing people still trapped beneath the rubble having passed.
