Rescuers in Colombia have miraculously saved a baby found buried beneath the rubble following a powerful earthquake that struck the western part of the country. The 7.4-magnitude tremor, the strongest to hit Colombia in over a decade, has resulted in at least 250 fatalities and more than 2,500 injuries, with an estimated 4,000 people still unaccounted for.
Dramatic video footage shows searchers carefully lifting debris from a collapsed apartment building, revealing a man cradling an infant. The rescuers then gingerly took the baby and brought him to safety. One of the rescuers, Brian Osorio Zuluaga, was near the destroyed La Torres del Limonar apartment complex when he heard faint sounds from the wreckage.
"Yes, I’m here. I’m with a baby," a voice responded when Zuluaga called into the darkness. He and other volunteers worked to clear debris, facing a large concrete slab that initially seemed too heavy to move. "On the first attempt, we couldn’t lift it," Zuluaga told CNN, "But then, we all lifted together — one, two, three, up."
As they cleared a path, the baby appeared to be in distress, with its head described as purplish due to difficulty breathing. "Once we started removing the rubble, the baby began to… breathe, and his color started to come back," Zuluaga recounted. The infant was handed to a police officer and taken to an ambulance while efforts continued to rescue the trapped man.
Zuluaga emphasized the power of collective action, stating that the removal of the heavy slab demonstrated what can be achieved when people unite for a common purpose. "Unity is strength, because no one person alone could have lifted that piece of rubble; it was so large and so heavy," he said. "It’s better to act than to stand still. Every bit helps."
The earthquake caused widespread devastation across western Colombia, prompting a major volunteer effort to find survivors amidst the wreckage. The scale of the disaster continues to unfold as rescue and recovery operations proceed.