Isabela Narváez, a 12-year-old Venezuelan girl, survived the collapse of the Residencias Caraballeda Sol building in La Guaira during the earthquakes on June 24, but her parents were not so lucky: they died covering her with their bodies to save her life.
According to Univision Tampa Bay, when the building started to collapse, the apartment door wouldn’t open, and the girl's parents, identified as Claudis and Fran, made the only possible decision.
"What Isabela told us, a bit calmer now, is that the door wouldn't open and Mom and Dad protected her," said Mariela Gari, Isabela's aunt and a resident of Tampa.
Isabela was rescued from the rubble; she was one of the five people who managed to escape the building alive.
While the little one remains in Venezuela, her sister Antonella, just a few years older, is coping with grief from Tampa, separated not only by distance but also by the impossibility of hugging the only immediate family member she has left.
"It was very hard to talk to my mom for a moment and then suddenly I can't talk to her anymore," she expressed with a trembling voice.
The family has made an urgent appeal to U.S. authorities to grant a humanitarian visa that would allow the reunion of the two sisters.
"It's a very bad feeling because I think that in these moments, the family should be more united, and obviously my sister will be with me," Antonella declared.
As an argument in favor of the viability of the process, the relatives point out that the United States embassy in Caracas—closed for seven years and reopened on March 30—is now operational.
"In Caracas, the United States embassy is already operational," said a relative of the Narváez sisters in the video shared by Univision.
There is no specific humanitarian visa program for Venezuelans affected by the earthquake; the family is requesting that an exceptional route be applied given the magnitude of the tragedy.
The story of the Narváez sisters reflects the human dimension of the worst seismic catastrophe that Venezuela has experienced in over a century.
The two earthquakes with magnitudes of 7.2 and 7.5, which occurred just 39 seconds apart with epicenters in the state of Yaracuy, have resulted in an official balance of 2,295 deceased, 11,267 injured, and 12,841 affected individuals as of the close of July 1, according to the Venezuelan government.
However, the UN estimates that there may be up to 50,000 missing after the earthquakes, while the citizen platform Encuéntralos recorded over 71,000 people unaccounted for as of July 1.
Six days after the earthquakes, hundreds of survivors remain in makeshift camps set up among the debris, facing deteriorating sanitary conditions and uncertainty about the future.
On Wednesday, the interim president Delcy Rodríguez declared seven days of national mourning, with flags at half-mast on public buildings across the country.
"The hope of this family is singular: that these two sisters reunite," summarized the loved ones of Isabela and Antonella.
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