“Doctor, I need to live.”
That is what Ana María Saavedra Caicedo, 23, told the anesthesiologist before going into surgery at a medical center in Cali, Colombia. Minutes earlier, she had been rescued from the rubble of her building, which collapsed in the magnitude 7.4 earthquake that shook the country on August 10, 2026. She sheltered under a solid wood table, and that saved her life.
What she still did not know was the extent of what she had lost. Her triplet sisters, Sofía and Isabella, died buried in the same building. So did her parents, Jairo Hernán Saavedra and Blanca Victoria Caicedo, and her uncle Diego Efraín Caicedo. No one dared tell her immediately: several days passed before the family confirmed the news to her, on the night of Thursday, August 13.
Ana María underwent surgery for fractures in one arm and her pelvis. Her cousin Carlos Saavedra said the surgery went well and that doctors expect to discharge her soon. For a few days, she survived without knowing that she was the only one left of the three.
