Security guard rescued alive after 8 days under earthquake ruins in Venezuela

International search-and-rescue teams in Venezuela pulled 44-year-old Hernan Alberto Gil Flores alive from the ruins of a collapsed shopping center in the country’s La Guaira state Thursday, eight days after twin earthquakes devastated the country’s north.

Gil, a security guard at the Galerias Playa Grande shopping center in Catia La Mar, one of the hardest-hit areas, survived by sheltering under a reinforced desk in an underground parking booth.

The nine-story structure collapsed after two earthquakes measuring magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5 struck Venezuela on June 24, according to the US Geological Survey.

Gil was trapped nearly nine meters (about 30 feet) underground beneath roughly 140 tons of unstable concrete debris.

The operation began after a Costa Rican Red Cross team heard his voice over the weekend. More than 100 specialists from Chile, the US, Portugal, El Salvador and Costa Rica worked to free him.

Chile’s fire brigade said on X that the rescue took 70 hours and that Gil was in “good condition” after being pulled from the rubble.

On Wednesday, Chile’s USAR team released a one-minute video taken through a narrow structural opening. It showed Gil conscious and responsive despite a visible eye injury.

The rescue required extreme caution. Engineers warned that the underground parking structure had shifted three centimeters and that a nearby damaged building was tilting at nine millimeters per hour, nine times faster than its initial movement.

Rescuers sent Gil water and basic medical aid through a guide tube. Fearing he might not survive the extraction, he initially asked rescuers not to tell his wife, Gusbimar Gonzalez, that he had been found alive.

Gonzalez, who had kept vigil at the site since the morning after the disaster, told CNN she had endured “days of great sorrow” believing her husband had died.

“But once I found out that he was alive I saw a ray of sunshine,” she said. “He was holding up like a hero.”

She said their children were waiting for him at home.

Gil was stabilized and taken by ambulance to a specialized medical facility in the capital Caracas.

His rescue brought a moment of hope as authorities warned that the chances of finding more survivors were fading several days after the devastating quakes left many buildings collapsed and infrastructure severely disrupted.

National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez said Wednesday the verified death toll had risen to 2,295. He said 11,267 people had been injured, 12,841 displaced and 782 aftershocks recorded since June 24.

The UN Refugee Agency estimated that at least 16,000 people had been forced from their homes.

NASA researchers said about 58,870 buildings were likely damaged or destroyed in the quakes, though other estimates are lower.

* Contributions by Berk Kutay Gokmen from Istanbul