Mother pulled from earthquake rubble in Venezuela with her newborn son

Dayana Patiño was trapped under the rubble with her 18-day-old son after the earthquakes that hit northern Venezuela. She says he was the one who motivated her to stay alive.

The mother of a baby pulled alive from the rubble in the wake of those that devastated Venezuela on Wednesday said she felt her son’s presence kept her alive.

Dayana Patino told the BBC that it was the 18-day-old son, John Davidwho gave her “motivation to stay awake and alert”.

“As long as he was alive, I was going to be alive“, he stated. “Every now and then, I touched his nose to confirm that he was still breathing”.

The rescue took place in La Guairaone of the areas most affected by earthquakes, on the outskirts of Caracas. Images show the baby being pulled from the wreckage by emergency teams.

Dayana described the grueling ordeal and the survival strategy she adopted as she desperately waited for help. “I told myself I wasn’t going to waste energy — that I would only scream when necessarywhen I heard voices or footsteps nearby”, he said.

“I don’t know how I managed to stay so calmbecause his left leg was trapped under concrete. I couldn’t move. He had his temple pressed against a rock.”

It was then that he realized that There was a Bible underneath it. “That’s where my journey of survival began,” he said. Afters, she heard her brother calling her by name and shouted.

“I said to myself: This is my only chance. I screamed ‘I am here’ with all the strength he had, and he replied: “I found you, and I promise I won’t leave here until I get you out.”

“I felt like I was flying. Then I felt like I was sinking into water and land, and I fell into the hole where I was left. I don’t know how I didn’t leave my baby. I was crushed against furniture”, he said. Dayana suffered injuries to both legsbut the son escaped with only minor injuries.

At least 1,719 people died5,034 were injured and more than 15,000 were left homeless following the two earthquakes, according to the most recent report cited by .

The earthquakes, measuring magnitude 7.2 and 7.5, occurred less than a minute apart west of Caracas and were of the strongest to hit Venezuela in more than a century.