Rescuers pulled a 43-year-old security guard alive from a collapsed basement, ending a gruelling days-long operation that became a symbol of hope after the devastation of twin earthquakes that struck Venezuela eight days earlier.
Hernan Alberto Gil Flores was extracted safely after being trapped since June 24th under the rubble in the basement of the Galerias Playa Grande shopping centre in the coastal town of La Guaira.
Rescuers initially made contact with him over the weekend.
Teams carrying flags from across the world cheered as rescuers carried Gil Flores on a stretcher covered in an orange tarp through throngs of people into a Red Cross ambulance.
READ MORE
A group of men in red Costa Rican Red Cross uniforms embraced and laughed in relief.
Gil Flores, who worked as a night-shift security guard at the complex, was inside his small security cabin when the first violent tremor struck.
While the surrounding concrete structure collapsed around him, his workstation cabin held ground, shielding him from crushing debris and creating a vital pocket of air.
[ Bodies pile up at Venezuela’s morgues as state services break downOpens in new window ]
“When we found him, he asked us not to tell his wife that he was alive, just in case he wouldn’t make it,” Costa Rican Red Cross rescuer Minyar Collado told the Associated Press (AP).
A specialised team from the Costa Rican Red Cross first detected signs of life and established contact with him on Sunday.
His wife, Gusbimar Gonzalez, told the AP that she had days of despair before rescuers made contact, but that then “when I learned he was alive, I saw a ray of light in the darkness”.
The couple have two children, ages eight and 10.
The operation was co-ordinated by an urban search and rescue team of Chilean firefighters, who worked around the clock with specialised teams from the US, Portugal and Mexico, among others.
“We [were] never going to leave him here,” Collado said before the rescue.
Rescuers navigated highly unstable structural conditions, torrential rain and persistent aftershocks to tunnel down to the survivor.
They used a telescopic camera to maintain constant contact with Gil Flores, passing water and liquid nutrients through a narrow shaft to keep him hydrated during the final three days of the extraction.
Maria Paz Campos, a veteran firefighter from Chile, talked him through the entire operation and kept him calm during the final excruciating hours of Thursday.
In a video published by the Chilean firefighters in the hours before the rescue, Gil Flores is seen drawing, seemingly to pass the time.
Campos then gently tells him to look at the camera and to wear protective goggles.
“I need that you keep the goggles on, for the small particles that are falling, to avoid them getting into your eye,” Campos told the Venezuelan survivor.
The collapse of the building was triggered by two back-to-back earthquakes on June 24th that registered magnitudes of 7.2 and 7.5, respectively.
The shallow, violent tremors damaged or destroyed tens of thousands of buildings across northern Venezuela, killing more than 2,200 people, injuring over 11,000 and leaving La Guaira state as the hardest-hit region in the country.
The number of people listed as still missing on an unofficial but widely used online list was down to some 38,600 on Thursday morning, after peaking at nearly 60,000 in the days immediately after the quake.
A United Nations envoy this week said it was procuring 10,000 body bags for Venezuela and experts have estimated more than 10,000 deaths are possible.
Venezuela’s socialist government, in power under three different leaders since 1999, has for years promoted “civilian-military-police unity” and high-ranking security officials hold power over huge business interests.
The army has some 2,000 generals controlling disparate groups of poorly paid troops, while intelligence bodies like the domestic spy agency and military counter-intelligence are involved in everything from processing repatriated migrants – including deportees who were killed during the quake - to surve–llance of civilians and the alleged torture of political detainees, allegations of which are denied by the government.
State television regularly broadcasts images of interim president Delcy Rodríguez meeting with military and security officials and groups of heavily armed soldiers and dozens of police are patrolling major roads in La Guaira and sometimes directing traffic. But the response to the disaster has been led by civilians, many of them volunteers.
Victims of the quake have spent days trying to dig out loved ones with their hands, shovels and pickaxes, assisted by firefighters, civil protection corps, thousands of members of foreign rescue teams, student doctors and nurses, civilians who normally work as teachers and veterinarians and occasionally, a soldier.– AP. Additional reporting: Reuters
