“Don’t go, don’t leave me,” pleads Amir, a 16-year-old boy pinned beneath the weight of an entire building following earthquakes measuring 7.5 and 7.2 in Venezuela.
He has been trapped for over twelve hours amidst the ruins of the Luisa Cáceres de Arismendi complex in Playa Grande—located in the town of Catia La Mar, in the coastal state of La Guaira—though his face and part of his torso are visible through the rubble.
This coastal state in the country’s north, neighboring Caracas, has been hardest hit by the earthquakes, according to Interim President Delcy Rodríguez, who declared it a “natural disaster zone due to the number of buildings that collapsed.”
Help has not yet reached Amir, and the young man’s strength is fading.
“I think I’m going to be left disabled. It [the building] keeps getting heavier,” the teenager—a high school and music student—told EFE.
