‘When I turned around, nothing was left’: One father's search for family after Venezuela quakes

Nelson Torrealba said a quick goodbye to his wife and two sons and called out that he would be back soon before jumping into his car to pick up some groceries last Wednesday.

It was around 6pm as he pulled away from their luxury seaside apartment building in northern Venezuela’s La Guaira region. Suddenly he felt a strong breeze through the car’s open windows, before the earth shook violently beneath him.

The building’s security guard screamed at him to jump from the vehicle. Then, from the ground, he heard an enormous crash behind him.

"There was a very dense yellow cloud of dust so thick… you couldn't see," he recalls.

As the dust began to settle, he looked towards where his building had stood just moments before. Nothing remained but a jagged mountain of rubble. “In the time I turned around, there was nothing left,” he says.

Nelson lived in a seventh-floor apartment at the Ritasol Palace with his wife, Dallenyi, and their two sons, 14-year-old Samuel and 10-year-old Matías. It was the only home the boys had ever known.

"It was paradise – comfort, security. A Saturday here was football games on the court with the kids, bicycles, pool and beach," he says.

But it was perhaps the time the family spent inside their apartment that Nelson treasured the most.

If he was having a bad day, he would come home and ask Matías for a hug to help “recharge my energy.”

"He would say, ‘Let's go Daddy,’ and he would embrace me and say, ‘What percentage of your battery have you recharged?’ I'd say, ‘I still need more.’ He'd say, ‘You have 90%,’ and then he'd be like, ‘Daddy, that's it. 100% now.’"

"It was an incredible comfort," he says.

“I could come in from the street with a lot of problems, but when I saw my children's faces, I was reset,” he adds before quietly weeping.

Venezuela is prone to earthquakes, but surviving residents say they had never felt unsafe in Ritasol Palace. Some speak of it as a sanctuary.

The 11-storey building was divided into apartments and holiday accommodation, with sea views on one side, and mountains on the other.

It had a large swimming pool surrounded by palm trees, overlooking the sea, and a basketball court. There were cafes and bars nearby and rows of lounge chairs on the beach located just across the road.

"It didn't fall gradually, it didn't give anyone a chance to run or hide," says Nelson, as he overlooks the ruins.

The water in the swimming pool is now blackened, filled with furniture and debris.

Traces of the lives once lived inside its apartments now lie among the rubble – smiling faces in a wooden photo frame, floral bed sheets, a child's pair of rubber boots.

Surviving residents say official search efforts ended on Saturday, when – after an 11-year-old boy was rescued alive – it was declared that there were no more signs of life.

The date was spray painted onto a wall by rescuers, along with other details – like the one survivor they found here and the 22 bodies they estimated to be under the rubble.

But the neighbours continue to congregate around their former home, trying to make sense of what happened to their community and to find those still missing.

After the earthquakes hit, Nelson ran towards the rubble, screaming the names of his wife and sons.

"There was no answer. Everything was very confusing. There was silence, but then a lot of noise – ambulances, vehicle alarms. It was too much," he says.

He started to hear the voices of neighbours, who were trapped but alive, calling back to him. But at that moment he could think only of his wife and sons.

Among the neighbours trapped in the rubble was Angélica Mundarain.

She had been inside her apartment on the second floor lying in bed in her children’s room and drifting off to a Korean drama on YouTube when her eldest son shouted that the building was shaking.

Suddenly, she and her son were thrown from the building by the force of the earthquake.

"I don't think I even managed to stand up – I was already outside the building. I fell through a hole. My son too," she says.

As they lay in the rubble, they heard a desperate voice coming closer. Her son recognised it as Nelson’s.

Angélica was the aunt of Nelson’s wife, and the families who both lived at Ritasol Palace were close, often socialising at each other's apartments.

"When Nelson reached where we were, I said to him: ‘Dallenyi and the children, Matías, Samuel?’"

Nelson told her what had happened as he dug her out of the rubble.

Angélica slowly realised to her devastation that her younger son, 15-year-old Héctor, was also buried in the debris beneath her.

He had been doing his homework in her room before the earthquakes struck, and had asked her to leave so he could listen to music.

"I told him, ‘You're brutal, you know that? You're going to kick me out of my room?’" Angélica recalls, smiling sadly.

"He’s a footballer, an athlete, very charismatic," she adds proudly. "I have faith, I have faith, I have faith" that he is still alive, she repeats.

Missing posters are now stuck to lamp posts and walls around Ritasol Palace, for those believed to be still buried under the debris.

In pink writing on one piece of paper are the details of Nelson’s family, next to an old photo of his wife and youngest son.

"She’s a mother through and through – super dedicated," Nelson says of his wife. "She could come home tired from work, but the little arepas [flat breads] were always there for breakfast, lunch was never missing, the clothes were always clean," he says.

When the BBC visited the building on Sunday, a constant stream of residents and locals came to look at the rubble and the posters and to console each other.

Alvin Duarte wiped away tears as he looked in disbelief at a photo of his cousin’s family. "They are there," he said, gesturing to the pile of rubble beneath a mangled air conditioning unit. "They lived on the eighth floor."

Since the night of the earthquake, Alvin has visited Ritasol Palace at the same time every day.

Sometimes, he goes up to the rubble and calls the names of his missing loved ones into it, in the hope that one of them is still alive and can hear that he is there, still looking for them.

"I feel helpless that I can't do anything... I would like to lift the stones and go in to look for my family members," he says through tears.

The BBC spoke to the families of more than a dozen people believed to still be buried at Ritasol Palace.

More than 1,900 deaths have been officially recorded so far in Venezuela since the earthquakes hit a week ago, but the final toll is expected to be many times higher. Tens of thousands have been reported missing, and the United Nations has said it is procuring 10,000 body bags for the country.

At Ritasol Palace this week there was anger that official search efforts had been stopped, with one woman screaming at a passing rescue worker and begging for help.

Surviving residents and relatives of those buried beneath the building say they need their bodies so they can mourn for them. Some still hope their loved ones have miraculously survived.

By Monday, residents had got hold of heavy machinery and were using it themselves to begin to clear through the rubble.

At the same time, efforts were ongoing to pick through different parts of the building piece by piece.

Nelson is among those searching by hand for his family. His worried parents, who are also spending every day at Ritasol Palace, watch on.

"He’s like a robot," his mother says, concerned and tearful.

Nelson only leaves Ritasol Palace to wash and change at his parents’ house. He feels he has no choice but to continue searching.

"It’s the least I can do for them, since I wasn't there. I feel I should have been there and my way of repaying them would be to give them a proper burial," he says. "I'm exhausted. I'm all cut up. My hands hurt, my feet, my legs. But… I continue."

He dreams now of having a grave to take a flower to.

But so far, all he has found is a small photo of his youngest son, which he carries in his pocket as he sifts through the rubble.

Additional reporting by Euridice Ledezma and Cristobal Vasquez. Street View images from Google Earth.