On Monday, August 10, at 7:34 in the morning, the ground shook in Colombia with a magnitude of 7.4. The epicenter was in San José del Palmar, Chocó, but the tremor reached Antioquia, Bogotá, Risaralda, and Valle del Cauca.
At the Clínica Panamericana in Apartadó, in the Antioquia region of Urabá, pediatrician Germán Somoyar was on duty. His workplace: the neonatal unit, on the sixth floor.
When the earthquake began, all protocols say the same thing: get out. Go down. Move away from the building. Germán did the opposite. He went back to the room where the newborns were.
There were Mateo and Salomón. Two babies who could not get up, could not run, and did not even know that the floor was shaking beneath them.
“Children have absolute priority”, he said afterward. He carried them, one in each arm, and went down six floors while the building shook. Along the way, he also helped two mothers paralyzed by fear.
According to the report by President Abelardo de la Espriella, the earthquake left 111 dead and 87 injured in the country. Mateo and Salomón are not on that list. They are alive, healthy, thanks to a doctor who decided that his shift did not end when the shaking began.