CALI, Colombia — Ana María Saavedra Caycedo was born a triplet. More than a week ago, she became the only one of her siblings still breathing. Rescuers freed her from the wreckage of her family's apartment building with a fractured pelvis and injuries to her arm; her two sisters, both parents, and an uncle did not make it out, according to CNN.
A Home Reduced to Rubble in Seconds
A magnitude-7.4 earthquake tore through western Colombia on August 10, with an epicenter near San José del Palmar in Chocó department, and few cities took a harder hit than Cali. The Saavedra Caycedo household was inside the building when it gave way, leaving all five relatives trapped beneath the wreckage. Several outlets, have identified the structure as the María Alvira building, in the city's Cuarto de Legua district.
Days after the quake, a cousin told Agence France-Presse that she had ducked beneath a table as the walls came down. A separate version, relayed by a different relative to Colombian radio and picked up by News247Plus and other outlets, holds that the family was already filing down a stairwell to leave the building when the quake struck, and that a heavy cedar door toppled onto Ana María, shielding her while her sisters — a few steps ahead — did not survive. Neither version has been publicly reconciled with the other.
Sisters Located on Different Days
One sister, Sofía, was found first, near what had been a stairwell. The other, Isabella, wasn't recovered until several days later, well past the roughly 72-hour mark rescuers generally treat as the outer edge for finding anyone alive. An uncle — identified in multiple reports as Vicky's brother, Diego Caycedo — died in the same collapse. Ana María's parents, referred to across coverage as Jairo and Vicky, were found together in a bedroom in what rescue crews described as an embrace.
Family members describe the three sisters as having stayed inseparable through all 23 years of their lives, down to reportedly choosing the same university degree so they wouldn't be apart. Diana March Espinosa, a cousin of the sisters' father who helped organize search support from her home in Florida, told The Mirror plainly that "her family isn't coming back."
A Fundraiser to Help Her Start Over
Ana María remains hospitalized after surgery on her pelvis. Espinosa and other relatives have organized a family fundraising campaign to cover her medical costs and help her rebuild now that she has lost both her family and her home, telling supporters her recovery will take far more than time in a hospital bed.
The Saavedra Caycedo family is one of hundreds swallowed up by the disaster, and the official numbers describing it have shifted substantially even in the past few days. Two days after the quake, authorities put the nationwide death toll above 280, with Cali alone accounting for more than 100 of those deaths. By August 15, The Latin Times cited a toll of at least 294 confirmed dead, roughly 320 people unaccounted for, and close to 4,000 injured, alongside early estimates of more than 12,000 destroyed homes and upwards of 100 collapsed buildings.
Those numbers have since moved in a direction that could be mistaken for good news but is mostly bookkeeping. Colombia's disaster risk agency later revised the death toll down to 289 and then 287, citing consolidation of records rather than fewer fatalities. The missing count, meanwhile, fell sharply from 320 to 143 — a shift authorities stressed does not necessarily mean the rest were found alive. A newer damage survey also pushed the destroyed-homes count far past the earlier estimate, to nearly 27,000, with well over 100,000 additional homes damaged. By the middle of last week, search crews had largely shifted from rescue to recovery work, effectively closing the active-search phase of what is now considered the deadliest earthquake to hit Colombia in decades.
Doctors expect Ana María's physical injuries to heal well before the rest of her ordeal does. For now, those close to her say the months ahead will center less on rebuilding an apartment than on learning to live in a world that no longer holds the four people who shaped nearly all of her 23 years.
