-Mum finds hope when she felt a Bible beneath her..
*Baby sustains minor injuries, mother injured in the leg as father escapes to safety jumping the fence
Rescued mother :“I said to myself I’m not going to waste my energy – I’m going to scream when it’s needed, when I hear voices or steps nearby,” she said.
“I don’t know how I kept so calm because my left leg was trapped under concrete. I couldn’t move. My temple was pressed against a rock.”
A fortunate mother who was helped out of from the rubble of her wrecked home in Venezuela earthquake with her 18-day-old baby says her son helped keep her alive, according to the BBC.
The turning point for Dayana Patino is the fact that her baby Juan David gave her “motivation to be awake and alert”.
“As long as he was alive, I was going to be alive. Every now and then I was touching his nose for proof that he was still breathing,” she told the BBC.
The media outlet says footage of the rescue has been shared around the globe be, “with Juan David becoming a symbol of hope in Venezuela, which has been devastated by the twin earthquakes that hit the country on Wednesday – killing at least 1,450 people.”
Thousands more persons are said to be missing in what the country’s interim president has described as the “most brutal natural catastrophe” in Venezuela’s history
The terrified mother told her story at a clinic in Caracas on Sunday, saying she had spent hours underground, holding her tiny son close and praying that they would be saved.
Before the earthquake struck, she had been busy doing the washing up in her eighth-floor apartment in the northern coastal region of La Guaira. She instantly rushed to cradle her son, thinking it would be “only a light tremor”.
She said: “I felt like I was flying. After that, I felt like I was sinking in water and dirt, and then I fell into the pit where I remained. I don’t know how I didn’t let go of my baby because I was flying. I got crushed against furniture.”
She added that she started to scream but soon realised that no one could hear her.
“I said to myself I’m not going to waste my energy- I’m going to scream when it’s needed, when I hear voices or steps nearby,” she said.
“I don’t know how I kept so calm because my left leg was trapped under concrete. I couldn’t move. My temple was pressed against a rock.”
Dayana said she found hope when she felt a bible beneath her.
“There began my journey of survival,” she said.
In the darkness of the rubble, she could see a “pinprick of light that looked like the moon”.
She said her rescue came after she heard her brother calling her name.
“I said to myself, this is my only chance. From the top of my lungs I cried out… I screamed ‘Here I am’ with all my might, and he said ‘I found you, and I promise you that I won’t leave until I get you out’.”
Thankfully, the brother kept that promise, and a delicate rescue operation followed to bring both mother and baby out of the rubble on Thursday night.
Dayana suffered injuries to both of her legs when the earthquake hit, while Juan fortunately only sustained minor injuries.
Dayana’s husband Gerson, on his part had just returned home and parked the car when the earthquakes hit. He managed to jump over a fence to safety.
When he saw what had become of their apartment building, he feared the worst.
He described the moment of his baby and wife’s rescue as “a miracle”.
“It was indescribable. I thought they were dead. And when I saw my son I felt like I was born again. I couldn’t believe it… I felt the life come back to me,” he told the BBC
Gerson and Dayana’s home has been destroyed, along with all their possessions, and they are devastated that their pet dog is still missing, but they say they will now “begin from scratch”.
“We lost almost everything but here we are.… We will rebuild everything we lost,” Gerson promised.
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