Man, daughter fall 13 stories in Chile quake and survive

CONCEPCIÓN, Chile — When their 13th-floor apartment began to shake, Alberto Rozas pulled his 7-year-old daughter into the bathroom doorway and waited for it to stop.

Instead, they fell.

Thirteen stories they plummeted as their new apartment building toppled like a felled tree, hugging each other all the way down.

Rozas had no idea which way was up until he looked through his apartment's shattered window and spotted light — "the light of the full moon."

Rozas and his daughter, Fernanda, clambered up to safety with only a few cuts, scrapes and bruises.

"I held onto her, and she never let me go," Rozas said Sunday.

Rozas' neighbors who lived on the other side of the hall found themselves trapped beneath the structure, as rescuers used electric saws and a generator-powered hammer to cut into the concrete.

As of Sunday, 23 people had been pulled alive from the 15-story Rio Alta building and seven bodies had been removed. An estimated 60 people remained trapped inside Sunday.

Socovil, the company that opened the concrete-and-glass structure last June, said it had complied with all building codes.

After they climbed out of the wreckage, Rozas took Fernanda to her mother's house, then returned to help firefighters. He retrieved medicine and clothes for Fernanda. And his own guitar.