Karina Blanco was teaching a spinning class when the ground began to shake in La Guaira, Venezuela. She ran to her building and found only a hole where her 12-year-old daughter, Fabiana, had lived before.
Under the rubble, the girl clung to a calm she did not even understand herself. She found a jar of ketchup and grated cheese, and that, she later said, was what kept her conscious for hours. A nurse trapped nearby heard her first. Then Viktor arrived, a volunteer who never stopped calling out to her until the firefighters —who had already given up twice— finally managed to open a tunnel.
32 hours after the June 24 earthquake, Fabiana emerged with a smile and collapsed into her mother’s arms. Of the nearly 50 people who lived in her building, only three survived.