Security guard rescued from Venezuela earthquake rubble 8 days after massive quake: “Truly a miracle”

Catia La Mar, Venezuela – Hundreds of rescuers in Venezuela cheered and hugged on Thursday after pulling a man alive from the rubble of a collapsed building eight days after a double earthquake, AFP reporters said.

With the official death toll approaching 2,300 and a large number of people still missing, the rescue of security guard Hernan Gil after a long time under the rubble was hailed as a miracle.

Gil was taken out on a stretcher after a painful operation to extricate him from the collapsed seven-story building where he worked in Catia La Mar, a coastal resort that was nearly destroyed in the June 24 disaster.

“This is a miracle,” Gil's wife Gusbimar Gonzalez told AFP before his rescue.

“I'm really surprised because it's the first time I've seen so many countries come together like this to save one person,” he said.

Rescue teams from seven countries — Venezuela, Chile, the United States, Portugal, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Mexico — have worked around the clock for the past three days to reach him.

It was a difficult task where the teams had to avoid aggravating the collapse of already damaged, nearby buildings.

“It's a very difficult rescue,” Manny Sampang, a team leader from the Los Angeles County Fire Department who is in Venezuela to help with rescue efforts, told CBS News before Gil was finally pulled out. “I have a lot of buildings that depend on that building that we're trying to rescue him from.”

El Salvador's president echoed that sentiment on social media, writing that “the aftershocks made this one of the most difficult rescues we've ever faced.”

Rescuers have been finding small miracles amid the disaster, including the rescue of an 18-day-old baby, who was pulled with her mother from the collapsed multi-storey building after they were both trapped for 32 hours. In another instance, a mother and her 9-month-old baby were pulled from the rubble of the collapsed building with “only minor injuries,” Virginia Urban Search and Rescue Task Force 1 said at the time.

A a small dog who was trapped under the rubble for five days was also rescued this week.

But the hope of finding many more survivors has faded.

There are no signs of life

Most of the collapsed buildings in the hard-hit town of La Guaira, north of Caracas, are marked with the letter 'D' for 'deceased' — a sign that they have been searched without any signs of life.

“Time is not wasted in an area where people are not expected to recover alive,” said Javier Rodes, the coordinator of the Spanish rescue team whose sniffer dog Nala scoured the rubble for signs of life.

The President of the National Assembly of Venezuela, Jorge Rodriguez, said on Wednesday that the number of people who died increased to 2,295, while more than 11,000 people were injured.

He said about 13,000 people have been left homeless.

Tens of thousands of people are missing.

Venezuela's interim president Delcy Rodriguez on Wednesday announced seven days of mourning, saying “the soul of the country is divided by the loss of people.”

Two powerful earthquakes, measuring 7.2 and 7.5, devastated the entire oil-rich region of Venezuela, which has been hit by decades of economic crisis that has destroyed infrastructure and health services.

The country is also in a fragile political transition six months after the United States overthrew leader Nicolas Maduro.

Fight for survival

The focus is now on the survival of those who escaped the earthquake. Many are homeless and food and water are becoming scarce.

There have been widespread reports of theft. On Wednesday, four police officers were arrested after they were caught by residents stealing valuables from the garbage.

The aid lines are getting longer every day, and many are surviving on the goodwill of volunteers and donations from fellow citizens.

“Here, we didn't get anything until last night when they started bringing water,” said Fatima Berroteran, 56, who has been sleeping with her family in a parking lot since their house collapsed in the high center of La Guaira.

The World Food Program on Tuesday asked for $50 million to feed about 500,000 people for three months in Venezuela.

Disease risk

The fear of disease was also growing.

World Health Organization spokesman Christian Lindmeier said health workers in Venezuela are “under a lot of pressure.”

“There is an increased risk now of outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases” such as measles and diphtheria, due to low immunization coverage before the earthquake, he said.

The quake could damage or destroy 58,870 buildings, according to a preliminary analysis of satellite data published by NASA.