Venezuela Earthquake Survivor Pulled From Rubble Alive After 8 Days
A security guard trapped for eight days beneath the wreckage of a collapsed shopping mall in Venezuela has been pulled out alive, in what rescue officials are describing as a near-impossible outcome given how much time had passed.
Hernán Gil, in his forties, was working a night shift in a small concrete security booth inside the underground parking structure of the Galerías Playa Grande mall in Catia La Mar when back-to-back earthquakes struck the country on June 24. The booth is believed to have formed a protective pocket around him as the seven-story building came down, burying him under roughly 140 tonnes of debris.
International crews reached him after more than 100 hours of painstaking digging, finally freeing him on Thursday, July 2. Rescue teams from Venezuela, Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Mexico, Portugal and the United States worked the site around the clock, repeatedly reinforcing access tunnels that kept giving way because of how unstable the surrounding rubble had become. At one point, a task force leader from the Los Angeles County Fire Department who traveled to assist noted that multiple damaged buildings were leaning directly into the structure they were trying to dig through, adding another layer of danger to an already fragile operation.
Rescuers first picked up signs of life on Sunday, when a paramedic with the Costa Rican Red Cross heard faint calls for help coming from deep within the wreckage. He initially doubted what he was hearing and asked a colleague to confirm it before crews began racing to reach Gil. From that point forward, teams passed him water and a protective face mask through a narrow opening, later attaching an intravenous drip to keep him stable as the extraction continued. Footage recorded through a small camera inserted into the rubble showed Gil conscious, wearing a mask, with one eye visibly bloodshot from dust exposure.
Gil was eventually brought out on a stretcher, and responders said he emerged in remarkably good physical condition considering the length of his ordeal. His wife told reporters before the rescue that she had never seen so many countries unite to save a single person. Venezuela’s Acting President Delcy Rodríguez visited him in hospital afterward and publicly thanked the rescue workers, while also pushing back on criticism that the government’s disaster response had been too slow, insisting that thousands of officials had been deployed since the earthquakes hit.
By Thursday evening, the confirmed death toll from the twin earthquakes stood at 2,595, with tens of thousands of people still unaccounted for. Officials say more than 6,400 people have been rescued alive since the disaster began, and satellite analysis suggests nearly 59,000 buildings across the affected region were damaged or destroyed outright. The United Nations estimates that around 1.8 million people, including roughly 700,000 children, now need humanitarian assistance.
Gil’s rescue was not an isolated moment of hope. In the days following the quakes, crews also pulled an 18-day-old infant and his mother from a collapsed high-rise after 32 hours trapped together, and freed another mother and her nine-month-old baby with only minor injuries. Even a dog was rescued alive after five days under debris. Still, hope is fading for most remaining search sites, with many collapsed structures in the hardest-hit city of La Guaira now marked to indicate no survivors were found.
Humanitarian concerns are mounting alongside the search effort. The World Food Programme has appealed for tens of millions of dollars to feed displaced residents, while health officials have warned of rising risks of disease outbreaks due to disrupted services and gaps in vaccination coverage. Search and recovery operations across the region continue, with authorities cautioning that the death toll is likely to climb further in the days ahead.
I am Rukaiya Kadiwala, an experienced News Content Writer with 6+ years of expertise in hospitality, travel, hotel, restaurant, business, and lifestyle news. Skilled in writing, research, fact-checking, headline creation, and digital publishing, I create accurate, engaging, and high-quality content that informs and attracts readers worldwide.
