‘Heard a whisper’: Baby rescued from rubble 48 hours after Colombia earthquake
A baby was rescued alive from the rubble of a collapsed residential building in Cali, Colombia, nearly 48 hours after a powerful 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck the country, as rescuers entered the third day of search operations on Wednesday. The infant was found along with a trapped man after a faint voice from beneath the debris alerted rescuers to their presence.The dramatic rescue took place at the La Torres del Limonar residential complex, a five-storey building that collapsed after Monday’s earthquake. Brian Osorio Zuluaga, who was returning home on his motorbike after fleeing his office in Cali, stopped when he saw the building reduced to rubble.He approached the wreckage and began calling out for survivors, despite warnings of a possible gas leak. He then asked everyone around him to remain silent. A faint sound emerged from the debris, almost like a whisper, CNN reported.“Yes, I’m here. I’m with a baby,” a man’s voice said.Osorio and other volunteers immediately began clearing the rubble by hand to reach the pair. Their path, however, was blocked by a large concrete slab.“On the first attempt, we couldn’t lift it,” he said. Then, “we all lifted together — one, two, three, up.”The rescuers held the heavy slab aloft while others cleared a path towards the infant. Osorio said the baby’s head appeared purplish because he was struggling to breathe.“You can see the baby’s little head there — which, at the time, looked sort of purplish because he couldn’t breathe,” the CNN news report quoted Osorio saying. “Once we started removing the rubble, the baby began to… breathe, and his color started to come back.”Video showed the baby, covered in dust, being carefully pulled from the wreckage. A man with a bloodied arm could be seen lying on his side, still partially trapped beneath a concrete plank.Osorio said he was handed the baby and passed him to a police officer, who took the infant to an ambulance. Rescuers then turned their attention to freeing the trapped man.The 7.4-magnitude earthquake was the strongest to hit Colombia in more than a decade. The powerful tremor struck western Colombia on Monday, killing more than 200 people.
