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 within the basement of the Galerías Playa Grande shopping centre within the coastal town of La Guaira.
Rescuers initially made contact with him over the weekend and started a days-long operation to tug him from the ruins.
Teams carrying flags from internationally cheered as emergency employees carried Flores, wearing an oxygen mask, on a stretcher covered in an orange tarp, through throngs of individuals right into a Red Cross ambulance.
Rescue employees attend to Hernan Alberto Gil Flores after he was pulled from the rubble eight days after he was trapped by twin earthquakes that struck Catia La Mar, Venezuela, Thursday, July 2, 2026.
AP Photo/Fernando Vergara
A bunch of men in red Costa Rican Red Cross uniforms embraced and laughed in relief, while others broke out into applause, in keeping with The Associated Press.
Get day by day National news
Get day by day Canada news delivered to your inbox so you will never miss the day’s top stories.
The person was kept alive for much longer than the 48- to 72-hour threshold most rescue operations see survivors from because of food and water provided by emergency personnel as they worked to remove the concrete pinning Flores underground, it added.
Flores’ survival was partially because of his workstation cabin, which held its ground as surrounding concrete collapsed, shielding him from debris and providing an important pocket of air.
“After we found him, he asked us not to inform 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 go away him here.”
His wife, Gusbimar González, told the AP that she suffered days of despair before learning that rescuers had contact along with her husband.
“Once I learned he was alive, I saw a ray of sunshine within the darkness,” she said.
The couple have two children, ages eight and 10.
Mexican Army rescue employees seek for people trapped in collapsed buildings after earthquakes struck La Guaira, Venezuela, Sunday, June 28, 2026.
AP Photo/Matias Delacroix
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 lots of Flores.
María Paz Campos, a firefighter from Chile, talked Flores through all the operation and kept him calm in the course of the final excruciating hours of Thursday.
In a video published by the Chilean firefighters within the hours before the rescue, Gil Flores is seen drawing, seemingly to pass the time. Campos then gently tells him to have a look at the camera and to wear protective goggles.
“I want you to maintain the goggles on, for the small particles which can be falling, to avoid them stepping into your eye,” Campos told him.
The constructing’s collapse was triggered by two earthquakes measuring 7.2 and seven.5 on the Richter scale, respectively, that rattled the country on June 24. The tremors damaged hundreds of structures in northern Venezuela, killing at the least 2,200 people and injuring 11,000 more.
— with files from The Associated Press
© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.