# The Silence After the Search: Lucas Trejo’s Agony Amidst the La Guaira Ruins

**By Amelie Fontaine**  \nPublished August 12, 2026  \nUpdated August 12, 2026

> After 74 hours of searching through the ruins of his home in La Guaira, Argentine footballer Lucas Trejo has been forced to face a reality no athlete should endure: the loss of his wife and children.

The search for life in the rubble of La Guaira has ended, not with a miracle, but with a hollow, devastating confirmation of ruin. For Lucas Trejo, the Argentine footballer playing for Venezuela's second-division side, Club Sport Marítimo de La Guaira, the professional world has vanished, replaced by a personal catastrophe that defies description.

## The 74-Hour Vigil

The timeline of the tragedy is a grueling descent from professional routine to primal desperation. While Trejo was in Caracas for his team's training camp, the earthquake struck, turning the coastal city of La Guaira into a landscape of debris. Upon receiving news of the disaster, Trejo immediately abandoned the safety of the training camp, racing toward the most heavily impacted zones.

What he found was a void. His brother-in-law, Ricardo Ardiles, described the scene to *CNN Español*, noting that nothing remained of the family home. *"Doufali jsme, že v době otřesů nebyli uvnitř,"* Ardiles said, reflecting the agonizing uncertainty that gripped the family during the initial chaos.

For three days, Trejo lived in a state of frantic, impossible hope. He spent 74 hours scouring the ruins, pleading with authorities for heavy machinery to assist in the excavation. He was not alone in this desperate mission; his father and brother traveled from Argentina to join the search, bolstered by a wave of solidarity from teammates and fellow footballers across the sport. Yet, as the search crossed the 72-hour mark—the threshold experts identify as the critical window for survival due to dwindling access to water—the hope that had sustained the search finally extinguished.

## A Club in Mourning

The club, Club Sport Marítimo de La Guaira, confirmed the unthinkable: Trejo’s wife, Yanina, and their two children, Aarón and Ainhoa, perished in the earthquake. The sporting community has moved to surround the player in his grief, with the club issuing a poignant message of solidarity: **"Lucasi, nejsi sám. Tvoje rodina z Marítima de La Guaira stojí při tobě."**

The tragedy is not contained to a single household. The earthquake has claimed the lives of several other figures within the footballing world, highlighting the indiscriminate cruelty of the disaster. Among the fallen is Yimvert Berroteran, an 18-year-old talent whose trajectory seemed set for the international stage. Berroteran had recently represented Venezuela at the U-17 World Cup in Doha and had been a regular fixture for the U-20 national team.

## The Scale of the Disaster

The loss felt by the Marítimo de La Guaira family is a single, sharp needle in a much larger fabric of grief. According to local authorities, the death toll from the earthquake in Venezuela has surpassed 1,400 people, with thousands more still missing. The disaster has spared no one, claiming the lives of foreign nationals, including eight Chinese citizens and at least nine Spaniards, alongside various international tourists.

As the search efforts transition from rescue to recovery, the footballing community remains focused on Trejo, a man whose life has been irrevocably altered by the earth moving beneath him.

## Sources

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- [seznamzpravy.cz](https://www.seznamzpravy.cz/clanek/zahranicni-fotbalista-prisel-kvuli-zemetreseni-o-manzelku-i-dve-deti-rodinu-hledal-tri-dny-309574) — original
- [eximtours.cz](https://www.eximtours.cz/chorvatsko/dalmacie-jizni/makarska-rivijera/maritimo) — original
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