Venezuelan man pulled alive from basement rubble 8 days after twin quakes

A Venezuelan man has been pulled alive from the rubble of a collapsed basement after being trapped for eight days following back-to-back earthquakes that devastated the country.

Forty-three-year-old security guard Hernán Alberto Gil Flores was extracted safely after being trapped since June 24 in the basement of the Galerías Playa Grande shopping centre in the coastal town of La Guaira.

Rescuers initially made contact with him over the weekend and began a days-long operation to pull him from the ruins.

Teams carrying flags from across the world cheered as emergency workers carried Flores, wearing an oxygen mask, on a stretcher covered in an orange tarp, through throngs of people into a Red Cross ambulance.

A group of men in red Costa Rican Red Cross uniforms embraced and laughed in relief, while others broke out into applause, according to The Associated Press.

The man was kept alive for far longer than the 48- to 72-hour threshold most rescue operations see survivors from thanks to food and water provided by emergency personnel as they worked to remove the concrete pinning Flores underground, it added.

Flores’ survival was in part thanks to his workstation cabin, which held its ground as surrounding concrete collapsed, shielding him from debris and providing a vital pocket of air.

“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. “We were never going to leave him here.”

His wife, Gusbimar González, told the AP that she suffered days of despair before learning that rescuers had contact with her husband.

“When I learned he was alive, I saw a ray of light in the darkness,” she said.

The couple have two children, ages eight and 10.

The operation was coordinated by a search-and-rescue team of Chilean firefighters, who worked with experts from the U.S., Portugal, Mexico, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Venezuela, navigating aftershocks, torrential rain and unstable infrastructure to save Flores.

María Paz Campos, a firefighter from Chile, talked Flores 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 you to keep the goggles on, for the small particles that are falling, to avoid them getting into your eye,” Campos told him.

The building’s collapse was triggered by two earthquakes measuring 7.2 and 7.5 on the Richter scale, respectively, that rattled the country on June 24. The tremors damaged thousands of structures in northern Venezuela, killing at least 2,200 people and injuring 11,000 more.

— with files from The Associated Press