36 hours. That was how long Víctor Sardinha remained trapped beneath the rubble of the Los Molinos building in Caraballeda, Venezuela, after the double earthquake on June 24.
He was in the living room, just meters away from his wife Bárbara Celeste and his 3-year-old daughter Lucía Teresa, when the floor opened up and everything collapsed. He managed to tell them he loved them before falling into darkness. When he woke up amid the ruins, he was still breathing, though he did not know how or why.
Rescuers needed nearly 20 more hours of manual work to pull him out alive. His wife, his daughter, and five other relatives did not make it. Today, from a hospital bed, Víctor is trying to understand what it means to have been the only one to survive.