The family of flight passenger Daniel Alejandro Nunez, 28 – who’d also called his mother upon returning to Venezuela while still in state custody – was struggling to make sense of conflicting reports, too.
“We’ve searched for him in hospitals, in morgues – everywhere,” his stepfather, Jose Alejandro Abache, told BBC Mundo.
For families already separated for years by immigration status, the potential loss of their loved ones – immediately following their involuntary return – has been unimaginable.
Mildrey Sarazo, wife of Darwin Serrano Lopez, hadn’t seen her husband in three years – and on Monday still had not told their daughters, aged nine and 15, about any of this.
She, too, was waiting for proof – and for the body of her husband who “didn’t want to come back yet” from the US.
“We want to bury our relatives,” she said, adding: “We want them to hand him over so we can identify him and be certain.”
Other Flight 164 passengers, however, survived the hotel collapse and were stunned by the series of events that left them climbing out of rubble in a country they thought they’d left far behind.
Lisbeth Portillo, 58, was lying on a bed in a second-floor room shared with 16 other women when the building crumbled.
“I saw the woman next to me start to fall… they were all screaming for help,” she told the Associated Press news agency.
“I was born again – God gave me a second chance.”
Days went by before some families received word that relatives had made it out alive.
Relatives found Anderson Daniel Salcedo, 22, at Caracas’s university hospital and alerted his mother, who immediately travelled to the Venezuelan capital, Reuters reported, only to find they had already amputated his legs.
Salcedo had lived in the US for three years, sending money home, before he was put on Flight 164 – then trapped under rubble for nearly two days.
“He spent 40 hours in that hole, he didn’t have an ID, they couldn’t account for him because he had no documents,” his grandmother, Marlene Lozano, told Reuters.
“We had no way to communicate with him and didn’t know anything.”
“Here we are praying, asking God to give him strength and courage,” Lozano added. “We know he won’t be the same anymore – he’s missing his legs – but we love him, just the way he is.”
