BOCA RATON, Fla. — It has been 13 years since a devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake rocked Haiti, killing an estimated 220,000 people.
The nation, located on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, was buried in rubble. It took families years to rebuild their lives.
Jud Sancyr was just 6 years old when the home she lived in with her parents, two siblings and her cousin collapsed around her on Jan. 12, 2010.
"I remember it was a nice day at first," Sancyr recalled. "Then, out of nowhere, it just started shaking extremely hard, and I didn't know what was happening."
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Sancyr and her cousin cowered together in a bunk bed.
"One minute it was bright and everything was falling," Sancyr said. "The next minute it was dark, and the whole house just collapsed."
She said her bed was the reason why she survived the disaster.
"My bunk bed was made out of metal and it didn't collapse," she said. "My cousin and I were right there under the bunk bed, and we're alive today because of that bunk bed."
There were 57 aftershocks after the initial quake.
As Sancyr and her cousin sat in complete darkness, each of the aftershocks shook and sifted the rubble around Sancyr.
Finally, there was a glimmer of sunlight peeking through the debris around them. The two children were able to climb out through the hole.
Once outside, Sancyr said her little mind tried to process the trauma and the tragic news that her mother, brother and sister didn't make it out alive.
After surviving the earthquake, her father sent her to South Florida where she grew up with her mother's family in Delray Beach.
Sancyr is now a freshman at Florida Atlantic University and wants to become a pediatric nurse practitioner.
