Colombia’s earthquake tore apart this family with triplets. Only one survived
By Uriel Blanco, CNN
(CNN) — Ana María Saavedra Caycedo lay under the rubble for hours reeling from arm injuries and a fractured pelvis. When she was finally pulled out, it was into a harsh new reality: one where she was the sole survivor of her immediate family.
When the 7.4 magnitude earthquake shook western Colombia on August 10, the Saavedra Caycedo family was in their apartment in Cali, one of the hardest-hit cities.
Search and rescue efforts at the site began immediately and continued for days. Family and friends took to the streets to ask for help and volunteer in the rescue operations.
The triplets, Ana Maria, Sofia and Isabella Saavedra Caycedo; their father Jair Saavedra; their mother Vicky Caycedo and their uncle Diego Caycedo would all be pulled from the debris in the hours and days that followed.
The parents were found embracing in their final moments. Sofia and Diego were found dead too. And Isabella’s body was the last to be pulled from the rubble, the triplets’ cousin Camila Martínez Sierra said.
A family-organized GoFundMe campaign for Ana Maria has already received thousands of donations. The campaign page says she has already undergone surgery “and now faces a long recovery process.”
“Our hearts are broken by the loss of my uncle Jairo and Vicky and my cousins Sofía and Isabella,” Marinez Sierra posted to Instagram on Friday. “Now is the time to stay united and be there for our cousin Ana. Every bit of help, prayer, donation, and sharing counts.”
The triplets, according to the family’s fundraising campaign, had recently graduated from university and worked together.
“They had dreams, plans, and a whole life ahead of them,” their family wrote on the GoFundMe page. “We want Ana María to have a solid foundation to recover physically and emotionally and to restart her life, without also having to worry about how to pay for everything that is to come.”
Martínez Sierra remembered her relatives with several photos and videos of large family gatherings, trips, parties and moments they shared together.
One photo shows the family dressed in matching white outfits and black hats, sitting poolside with wide smiles at what appears to be a family reunion. Another shows them gathered around a night-time bonfire.
“I can only look at these videos and photos with a heart full of memories and a mix of love, nostalgia, and a pain I still don’t know how to explain,” she wrote in an Instagram post.
“Here are our reunions, the laughter, the hugs, the family moments, my uncles, the triplets … moments we lived without imagining that one day we would look at these images in such a different way,” Martínez Sierra said.
The Saavedra Caycedo family are among the at least 294 people confirmed to have been killed. Colombia’s National Unit for Disaster Risk Management said another 320 are missing while nearly 4,000 were injured in the earthquake.
More than 12,000 homes have been destroyed and over 100 buildings have been leveled. The earthquake was the deadliest to hit Colombia in decades. Families have been sharing urgent pleas on social media, hoping to track down missing loved ones and rescuers are continuing to work through the rubble.
“One never thinks that a photo can become such a precious memory, nor that a hug that seemed so ordinary could become something we would keep forever in our hearts,” Martínez Sierra said.
“This earthquake changed our lives in a matter of seconds,” Martínez Sierra said. “It reminded us, in the most painful way, that nothing is guaranteed and that many times we put off a hug, a phone call, an ‘I love you,’ a meeting, a visit.”
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