‘I’m going to stay calm’: Woman survives 48 hours under the rubble in Venezuela

CARABALLEDA, Venezuela – Andrea Canonico focused on her breathing to stay calm as she lay trapped under a building that had crumbled during the two powerful earthquakes that struck Venezuela last week.

Canonico, 23, spent almost 48 hours in the same position before being pulled out – alive.

“The most important thing about all of this was that I never lost hope,” Canonico told AFP in the Los Corales neighbourhood in the city of La Guaira, the hardest-hit by the disaster.

She is holding on to that hope for her 20-year-old brother and 91-year-old aunt who remain missing.

The 7.2- and 7.5-magnitude earthquakes on June 24 have killed almost 2,000 people, with warnings that the figure could soar.

“I told myself, I’m going to sleep,” Canonico recalled, up to her elbows in bandages following the ordeal.

“This is in the middle of a full-blown disaster,” she had told herself. “It’s surely going to keep shaking. I’m going to stay calm; I’m not going to get worked up about the breathing issue.”

She says she was able to sit up despite being covered by around six metres of rubble.

“I had my phone, of course,” which allowed her to keep track of time and enjoy a little light.

She was able to communicate with a man who was stuck a little higher up. Once he got out, he told his rescuers that she was also trapped.

“Above me there was an opening I was able to climb up through,” Canonico said, explaining how she “managed to reach the other opening the rescuers were making”.

“From there I kept climbing while they pulled me up, and that’s how I was able to get out.”

“Is anyone alive in here?!” the voice of Moises Faramaya ricochets around the ruins of the same neighbourhood.

The ex-miner is using his know-how to rescue others in the same situation as Canonico.

The 26-year-old says he has rescued 16 people alive and recovered 22 bodies in La Guaira, which the authorities have declared a “disaster zone”.

He told AFP about one of the rescued, who he heard “scratching at a wall”.

“The person was pinned down but could move their hand. And I got them out alive,” said Faramaya, who added he uses “nothing but a pickaxe and a shovel” to pick through the rubble.

Nicknamed “the mole”, Faramaya said he got good at digging during a six-year stint in the mines of El Callao in the mineral-rich state of Bolivar.

Firefighters and experts ask for his help, and he hardly eats or sleeps, only smoking cigarettes to “stay active” during his brief breaks.

“The work you do in there isn’t easy – the dust, the smell of dead people who are already decomposing. But here we are, persevering,” he said.

The authorities recently declared that everyone in Canonico’s building had died.

Alexander Garcia, a 44-year-old waiter, said he heard firefighters declare “Code 14”, which he later found out meant that there were no survivors.

But when US rescue workers and Spanish sniffer dogs found traces of life, his hopes for his two trapped brothers were rekindled.

“Everyone heard them, everyone,” he told AFP after his mother was pulled from the detritus alive but later died.

Rescue efforts continue under torchlight as darkness falls.

Heavy rain on the morning of June 30 paused operations and dampened spirits, however.

The critical 72-hour window during which survivors were still likely to be found closed on the evening of June 27.

Hopes of finding survivors had faded substantially by June 30. AFP