Teenage brothers haunted by earthquakes flee Venezuela, only to face disaster again in Colombia

Deivi Delfín is fifteen years old and he carries the weight of two earthquakes in his body. He and his older brother Winder, seventeen, have learned what it means to lose everything twice over—first in Venezuela, then again, impossibly, in Colombia, just days after they thought they had escaped.

On the evening of June 24th, the brothers were heading home from the beach on Venezuela's Caribbean coast. Their younger brother Moissés had wanted to come along, but their mother Yusmani had said no. Winder kept asking. She wouldn't change her mind. At 7:21 p.m., two earthquakes struck in rapid succession—magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5, separated by only thirty-nine seconds. The brothers held each other as the ground moved beneath them, eyes shut tight. When they opened them again, the world was dust and rubble. Their twelve-storey apartment building had collapsed. Inside it were their mother, their grandmother Carmen, and Moissés—the boy who had been grounded that day.

The Venezuelan government would count more than 6,300 dead. La Guaira, where the brothers lived, was the hardest hit. For three days after the quake, Deivi and Winder had nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat. They joined the rescue efforts anyway, crawling through the wreckage on their hands and knees, squeezing through spaces only their teenage bodies could fit, using phone lights to guide rescuers to where they thought their family might be. Their father Deivid was in Colombia when the earthquakes struck. It took him three days to find his sons after he returned to Venezuela. Then began a search that would consume nearly a month of their lives.

The brothers became something other than children during those weeks in the rubble. Deivi would later say he no longer felt like one. They found fragments first—Moissés's shorts, their mother's Bible, an unfinished shopping list. Then Deivi spotted a piece of fabric he recognized as his grandmother's floral skirt. Firefighters confirmed they had found a woman's body. Winder was the first to recognize their mother. She still had the plastic bag on her head that she had been using to dye her hair when they left for the beach that morning. He stayed with her for a few moments, as close as he could get. When they finally removed the concrete slab pinning her down, they found Moissés beneath her, still holding on. Their father collapsed at the sight of his youngest son. "When his little head fell into my hands," Deivid said, "I broke down."

After burying their family, the brothers moved with their father to Cali, Colombia, where he worked. They arrived on a Friday, carrying their grief into a modest neighborhood of low-rise houses on the northeastern edge of the city. They spoke of wanting to work hard and study, to make their mother proud. They had survived. They were going to rebuild.

Three days later, on Monday, the ground moved again. Colombia's strongest earthquake in a century—magnitude 7.4—tore through the country. Cali was among the hardest-hit areas. Deivi woke to gentle movement and thought he was dreaming until the shaking intensified. He ran downstairs. Winder did the same. Outside, they grabbed a metal gate and held on. Their father had been out on the street. When he felt the tremor, his first thought was of his sons. He ran back to the house, but they were already outside, waiting by the barbershop where he worked.

When he found them, they tried to calm him down. "Dad, stay calm," they said. "We've been through this before." Two teenagers who had lost their mother, their brother, their grandmother, their home—now telling their father not to be afraid. The earthquake was still haunting Deivi, he would tell the BBC. He and Winder felt chased by tremors, pursued across borders by disaster. But they were still here. They were still standing. And they knew, in a way most people never have to learn, how to survive.