Emergency teams are rushing to search for the mother of an infant rescued from the rubble of a collapsed building after a 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck Colombia on Monday.
Three-month-old Salomon was pulled alive from a five-storey residential building in Cali after onlookers heard his father’s faint voice saying “I’m here. I’m with my baby” through the rubble.
Video of the astonishing rescue shows the toddler, wearing a bodysuit covered in dust, being carefully pulled from the wreckage. The father, Juan David Gomez, can be seen lying awkwardly under a concrete slab, his arm covered in blood.
Now, as Salomon and his father recover in hospital, a frantic search continues for the baby’s mother, Valentina Vanegas Galliano, a 29-year-old architect. Gagliano and his brother remain trapped under the rubble of the same building, Torres del Limonar.
Valentina’s friends and colleagues, including architects, engineers and construction workers, are joining emergency services and firefighters in the search effort.
“Valentina’s exact whereabouts have not been confirmed and there are no signs of life,” her friend Alejandra Montoya told CNN on Wednesday.
As a critical 72-hour deadline to rescue survivors closes, Valentina’s friends are urgently seeking help from a team of experts, including the Topos Tlatelolco Rescue Brigade, a Mexican organization with extensive experience in responding to natural disasters.
But Colombia has only just begun accepting international aid and rescue teams, after initially turning down some offers, at a critical time after the devastating earthquake, the deadliest in more than a decade. The delay is believed to be the first controversy for the country’s new government, led by conservative President Abelardo de la Espriela, who was sworn in last Friday.
The earthquake struck western Colombia at 7:34 a.m. Monday, killing at least 265 people and destroying thousands of homes, news agency de la Espriela said.
Outside Torres del Limonar, Montoya said he had barely left the scene since Monday.
She said the baby’s father was able to provide a reference point for where Valentina may have been trapped, and rescue teams were using that information and technical analysis of the structure to prioritize areas where other signs of life were heard.
“Juan David says she was about 10 to 10 feet ahead of him, which means she was a little closer to the entrance, so she went into the building and it was very difficult to find her,” Montoya said.
A video Montoya shared with CNN shows dozens of volunteers and rescue workers working through the rubble. According to Reuters, more than 20 people were rescued alive from the complex in the first 12 hours after the earthquake. Since then, three more people and a dog have also been found alive.
Baby Salomon and his father, Juan David, are in stable condition and are being monitored. Montoya said the baby suffered several scrapes and a minor bruise on his head, but the father underwent surgery and is recovering.
They were found under the rubble after a bystander, Brian Osorio Zuluaga, heard Juan David’s cries for help.
When the deadly earthquake struck, Osorio ran out of his office in Cali and raced home on his motorcycle. But the sight of a collapsed five-story house forced him to stop.
“It was a large complex that covered an entire block,” Osorio told CNN.
Osorio said residents of the building and neighbors fled into the street, “some in night clothes and pajamas, some crying, some in shock.”
Despite warnings of a possible gas leak, he approached the rubble and began shouting at the survivors.
He suddenly asked for silence from those around him, and a faint voice could be heard from within the rubble–almost a whisper.
Osorio described how he and several others moved debris by hand and carefully lifted a large concrete slab until they could reach the baby while other volunteers cleared a path for the baby.
“You can see the baby’s little head there, and it looked purple because it wasn’t breathing at the time,” Osorio said. “Once we started clearing the debris, the baby…started breathing and his skin color started to return.”
Osorio said she was handed the baby and handed it to a police officer who took her to an ambulance. Then they turned their attention to freeing the father.
Among the rubble, Osorio said he saw clothes, shoes and stuffed animals covered in dust. He thought of those who might still be trapped.
The courage of everyone who came to the rescue saved the lives of the man and his baby.
“Unity is strength, because no one could lift that rubble alone. It was so big and heavy,” he said.
Osorio added: “It’s better to act than to stand still.” “Every bit helps.”
The earthquake struck the heart of the country’s coffee-growing region, plunging the community into a state of national disaster as world leaders offered relief and aid.
A woman was pulled from beneath a pile of rubble in Cali on Tuesday to cheers as firefighters carried her out on a stretcher after a complex multinational rescue operation.
And in Pereira, a CNN team on the scene saw rescue workers and volunteers working in human chains to clear debris and rescue trapped people from an apartment building.
“There are people who have flown in and you can see them wearing everything from athleisure wear to shorts to tennis shoes. They are not prepared for this,” CNN senior national correspondent David Culver said from the site. “We have seen scenes like this all over Pereira. This is one of the hardest hit areas.”
But at the epicenter of Monday’s quake, Choco, an indigenous leader in Colombia’s poorest region, told CNN that no aid has yet arrived.
“All our houses are on the ground,” said Victor Chamapulo, leader of Buenavista, the Wunan indigenous reserve in Chocó’s Litoral del San Juan.
Chocó’s Ounaan indigenous community says their home is ‘on the ground’
“Where are we going to sleep now? We have to be careful now. We’re sleeping outside,” he said.
Chamapuro has called on authorities to send food and medicine, but the Buenavista reserve is only a five-hour boat ride from the port of Buenaventura on Colombia’s Pacific coast.
A video sent by Chamapuro from the reserve shows a flat building that appears to be built of wood and corrugated iron. Others are still standing, but with varying levels of damage.
