Teens who fled Venezuela's deadly quakes face another disaster in Colombia
The twin earthquakes that struck La Guaira on 24 June, with magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5, left more than 6,300 dead and shattered a 12‑storey apartment block. In that night, 15‑year‑old Deivi and his 17‑year‑old brother Winder lost their mother, grandmother and one of their younger brothers. They fled to Colombia, hoping for safety, only to be met with another shock a few days later.
At their new home in Cali, the brothers watched a 7.4‑magnitude quake rip the city. The trembling sent streets into chaos just like those they had left behind. The brothers, still teenagers, moved through debris with a flashlight, searching for the missing remains of their family and the stray bodies they feared trapped under concrete.
The family’s ordeal began when the epicenter in La Guaira destroyed their apartment. The brothers forced their way out of the collapsed structure, carrying only the few personal items they could salvage. While searching, they came across a fragment of a floral skirt in the rubble—his grandmother’s clothing—which confirmed they were in the correct ruins. Minutes later, firefighters recovered a woman’s body—the mother’s—and the youngest brother clutching her hand was lifted from the concrete slab.
“My world came crashing down,” Winder says, reflecting on the twin tremors that seem to repeat themselves. The brothers stayed in the dangerous district of Cali until authorities opened the first safe zones, but the outbreak of a new quake just days later pushed them back into peril. Their father, who had been working in a barbershop in the city, hurried to find his sons after lockdown; he was reunited with them outside the shop, and together they moved to safer accommodation in a low‑rise neighbourhood.
“We’ve been through this before,” Deivi recites, a reminder that each tremor erodes childhood as much as it takes homes. In the wake of the second quake, the siblings hope for a future of hard work and study that will honor the memory of the loved ones lost.
With each new seismic event, the story of Deivi and Winder underscores the compounding crisis faced by families that must flee and re‑displaced in fragile regions. Their courage illustrates the universal struggle for safety amid an increasingly volatile natural environment.
