‘Truly a miracle’: man rescued from Venezuela rubble 8 days after twin quakes
Multinational teams tunnel through collapsed building to extract security guard as the death toll continues to rise
Hundreds of rescuers in Venezuela cheered and embraced Thursday after pulling a 43-year-old man alive from the ruins of a collapsed building eight days after deadly twin earthquakes.
The official death toll has risen to nearly 2,600 and huge numbers of people are still missing, which meant the rescue of security guard Hernan Gil after so long under the rubble was greeted as a miracle.
Gil was brought out on a stretcher after a painstaking operation to extract him from the collapsed seven-storey building where he worked in Catia La Mar, a coastal area almost entirely razed to the ground in the June 24 catastrophe.
“This is truly a miracle,” Gil’s wife Gusbimar Gonzalez told Agence France-Presse as rescuers worked to free him.
One of Latin America’s worst earthquake disasters crushed scores of residential complexes, burying many in the rubble and triggering an international rescue operation.
Teams from seven countries – Venezuela, Chile, the United States, Portugal, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Mexico – worked around the clock over three days to reach Gil.