A man has been rescued alive after spending eight days trapped beneath the rubble of a collapsed building following twin earthquakes in Venezuela.
Emergency workers managed to free Hernán Gil, a security guard, more than 100 hours after they first located him buried under an estimated 140 tonnes of concrete.
Almost 2,300 people are confirmed to have died in the twin quakes, which struck on 24 June, and tens of thousands remain missing.
One Chilean firefighter described the operation to free Mr. Gil as “without doubt the most complex and technically difficult which I’ve had to tackle”.
‘Just perfect’
Mr. Gil had been on duty in a small concrete booth in the basement parking lot of a shopping mall in Catia La Mar when the earthquakes struck.
Rescuers say the structure of the booth created a protective shell around him, shielding him from the crushing weight of the collapsing building.
“He has told us that he does not even have a crushed nail,” said Allan Madrigal, a paramedic with the Costa Rican Red Cross who first heard Mr Gil’s faint cries for help on Sunday.
“It was an emotional moment,” Mr. Madrigal recalled, adding that he initially thought he was imagining the voice and had to ask a colleague to confirm the sound.
Mr Madrigal, who was on his first international mission, said the experience had profoundly impacted him. “The lad who came here a week ago is not the same one that will return to Costa Rica, believe me.”
A grueling race against time
The rescue became an international effort, drawing in specialist teams from Venezuela, Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Mexico, Portugal, and the United States.
The operation was plagued by danger. Access ducts dug by the teams collapsed several times, threatening both the rescuers and the trapped man.
As they inched closer, medics managed to pass water, an intravenous drip, and a face mask to Mr Gil through a small hole to protect him from the suffocating dust.
By Wednesday night, rescuers finally made visual contact using a small camera fed into the cavity. Footage showed Mr Gil alert, wearing goggles supplied by the team to protect his eyes from flying debris.
Keeping spirits high
Despite the ordeal, rescuers described Mr Gil as “a cheerful man” who helped keep up the morale of the teams working to save him.
“He himself drives us on, telling us to carry on,” Marco Antonio Franco of the Mexican Red Cross told the news site Milenio.
“He recognizes our team members, saying, ‘How nice that you came back and that you’re with me again.'”
Mr Franco added that they chatted constantly about Mr Gil’s family to keep his spirits up, and that the survivor even joked around, requesting specific flavors of hydration drinks. “Of course we indulged him,” Mr Franco said.
Following his extraction, Mr Gil emerged from the debris “just perfect” and was immediately taken for medical assessment.
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