Mom rescued from Venezuela earthquake rubble with newborn says baby helped her survive

A mother who was pulled from the rubble of her wrecked home in Venezuela with her 18-day-old baby has told the BBC of how her son helped keep her alive.

Dayana Patino said her son 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 said.

She had been doing the washing up in her eighth-floor apartment in the northern coastal region of La Guaira when the earthquakes hit. She instantly rushed to cradle her son, thinking it would be “only a light tremor.”

“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 said.

Instantly, she said she started to scream but soon realized 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.”

According to her account, she later heard her brother calling out to her.

“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,'” Dayana says.

And her brother kept his promise.

Footage of the rescue has been shared around the world, 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.

Tens of thousands more are missing in what the country’s interim president has described as the “most brutal natural catastrophe” in Venezuela’s history.