By Tom McCrae
Brother and sister Glenn and Rochelle Prattley survived the earthquake after being trapped in rubble, but a year on they say they are no closer to coming to terms with what happened.
Glenn Prattley lost both his five-week-old daughter, Taneysha, and his partner, 18-year-old Kelsey Moore, in the quake.
“My very first daughter meant everything to me, there’s no way I’d be even able to put into words,” says Mr Prattley.
“She was a really kind caring person, she always put everybody else’s needs before her own, always smiling,” he says of his partner.
The four of them were pinned under rubble after the Ruben Blades building collapsed.
“It slammed us through the building and the concrete just fell down - I remember the concrete on my foot and chest and managed to scream for help,” says Rochelle Prattley.
Lying in hospital in the days following, Mr Prattley had no idea what happened to his partner and daughter, and Rochelle Prattley only got out of hospital yesterday – it was her eighth visit since the quake.
But Ms Prattley says the experience has brought her and her brother closer together.
“Spending all the time in hospital in the same room, we were there together, when the rest of the family weren't,” she says.
The siblings still have questions about why the building was not cordoned off after the September quake.
“If something had been done about it there could've been the possibility that all the people who were killed around the area could still be here,” says Mr Prattley.
And while the anniversary is a milestone, it does not lesson the loss he will carry forever.
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