Teens who fled Venezuela after deadly quakes caught in another disaster in Colombia

Back at the end of June, the two teenagers had gone to the beach on Venezuela’s Caribbean coastline. Winder wanted to take their 10-year-old brother Moissés, but he was grounded.

“I kept insisting but my mum just wouldn’t budge,” he says.

As they were heading home on the evening of the 24th, earthquakes of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 struck just 39 seconds apart. The brothers hugged and shut their eyes. When they reopened them, everything was covered in dust and debris.

When they arrived home, they saw the 12-storey apartment building had collapsed, trapping their mother Yusmani, grandmother Carmen and brother under a mountain of concrete.

“My world came crashing down,” Winder says.

The earthquakes killed more than 6,300 people, according to the Venezuelan government. There is still no clear official figure for the number of people missing.

Winder and Deivi joined rescue efforts, but for three days had nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat. Their father, Deivid, who was in Colombia at the time, was unable to find them for three days after returning to Venezuela.

When he eventually found his sons, they began a search for their family members that would last nearly a month.