An Argentine football player lost his wife and two children in the devastating double earthquake in Venezuela that also destroyed the family’s home.
Lucas Trejo, 38, who plays for Venezuelan second division team Club Sport Marítimo La Guaira, spent days searching through the rubble for his Yanina Maranella, and their children, Aarón and Ainhoa, according to CNN Español.
The club confirmed on Sunday that his loved ones had died in the disaster, saying it “profoundly laments the irreparable loss”.
“I was playing at a game far from my home. I ran back to see if my family was good,” Trejo told Noticias Telemundo before the reports of their deaths. “The building was destroyed.”
Trejo said he searched through the rubble for his wife with his bare hands due to a lack of equipment as his teammates made public appeals for more machinery to assist with the search.
The footballer was at a team training camp in Caracas when 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude quakes hit and immediately rushed back to check on his family.
“I know nothing about my family; please pray for them,” Trejo wrote in a plea on social media. “I want to believe they weren’t there.”
His brother-in-law Ricardo Ardiles said that Trejo initially had “hope” that his family weren’t in the rubble. After reports circulated of a child being found alive in the debris, he looked through hospitals in the hope that it may be his son.
“What he found was a horrific scene,” Ardiles said. “He found absolutely nothing of what the building itself had been.”
Héctor Bello, another player from the same team, lost his wife Andrea, who died protecting their baby girl, their relative David Barreto told Noticias Telemundo.
“When everything crumbled all she did was get on top of the baby,” he said.
In a letter to his daughter on Instagram, Bello wrote: “Amidst all this pain, I know that if she had just a minute to say something to me, she’d tell me to protect you with my life—just as she did—and never to forget to buy you those bananas you love so much.”
More than 1,700 people have been confirmed dead since the two quakes struck the Venezuelan capital of Caracas last week. Rescue efforts are now in their fifth day with reports of 46,000 people still missing.
The international community has rallied to help Venezuela deal with the disaster, with most help focused in La Guaira, the hardest-hit state.
