Karina Blanco was about to start the spinning class she teaches when the earth began to shake. The tremors were getting stronger, so she grabbed her bag and ran out with everyone else.

“When I realized the magnitude of this, I started screaming ‘my daughter, my daughter’. I sat in my car and drove as fast as I could,” Karina said.

Their only daughter, 12-year-old Fabiana, was at home when two powerful earthquakes hit Venezuela seconds apart on June 24. The second earthquake was one of the strongest to hit the country in a century, with a magnitude of 7.5.

When Karina arrived at her building in Caraballeda, in the north of the state of La Guaira, she could hardly believe what she saw. “I could see a building, then a hole where my building was, and then another building.”

Inside her apartment on the first floor of the 10-story building, Fabiana was in her mother’s bedroom when she felt the earthquakes. She ran into the kitchen and was clinging to the counter as the walls around her collapsed. They threw her to the ground.

“I saw things shake, fall, break, and then the walls cracked. The wall separating my apartment from a friend’s apartment collapsed. At that moment I thought, ‘I’m going to die. I’m not going to survive this. No one is going to rescue me,'” Fabiana said.

From then on, 32 unbearable hours began.

Outside the collapsed building, Karina saw half of her daughter’s bed sticking out of the rubble.

“I was running from one end of the complex to the other screaming ‘She’s dead. My daughter is dead.’ I didn’t know what to do,” Karina said.

Under the collapsed building everything was silent for Fabiana. She was lying on her back, trapped by debris on all sides, with the ceiling almost touching her face.

“I’m a person who gets very anxious and claustrophobic. But I don’t know why, a strange calm came over me. Maybe my mind was in shock,” she said.

Shortly after, a nurse caring for her upstairs neighbors began calling to see if anyone could hear her. -Replied Fabiana.

“She told me to stay calm and that everything would be fine,” Fabiana said.

Six hours after the earthquake, around midnight, the nurse was rescued. She told the volunteers who took her out that there was a girl named Fabiana alive inside.

“I had given myself to God asking for strength to start a new life without Fabiana. And then someone told me: ‘Your daughter is alive,'” Karina said.

She ran back to the building screaming through the rubble and calling out her daughter’s name.