La Guaira, Venezuela – On the evening of June 24, Jose Garcia was at home with his wife and two younger sons.
They shared an apartment on the second floor of the towering Ritasol Palace, eleven storeys of concrete and glass overlooking the turquoise coastline of Caraballeda, a seaside suburb of La Guaira.
But in a moment, it all came crashing down.
At roughly 6:04pm local time, a 7.2-magnitude earthquake rumbled across the coastline, followed, within seconds, by an even more powerful quake.
The entire edifice fell. Jose Garcia found himself no longer on the second floor — but instead buried in the basement of what had once been his building.
Trapped next to him were his two boys, 7-year-old Diego and 12-year-old Santiago.
“The worst thing that can happen to anyone is to be stuck like that,” said Jose, a 46-year-old car mechanic.
But an unexpected rescuer would arrive to help them survive what would become Venezuela's deadliest earthquake in more than a century.
