A 43-year-old security guard in Venezuela was pulled alive from the ruins of a shopping center Thursday after being trapped beneath the rubble for eight days following twin earthquakes that killed more than 2,200 people.
Hernán Alberto Gil Flores was rescued from the collapsed basement of the Galerías Playa Grande shopping center in the coastal state of La Guaira, where he had been trapped since the powerful earthquakes struck June 24.
“When we found him, he asked us not to tell 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.
Rescuers first made contact with Gil Flores over the weekend after detecting signs of life beneath the debris.
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Gil Flores was working an overnight shift when the first earthquake struck. While much of the building collapsed around him, his small security booth stayed intact, protecting him from the falling concrete and leaving enough space for him to survive.
Rescue crews worked through aftershocks, torrential rain and unstable rubble to reach him. They used a telescopic camera to communicate with Gil Flores and lowered water and liquid nutrients through a narrow shaft to keep him alive during the final days of the rescue.
His wife, Gusbimar González, said the family’s despair turned to hope after rescuers reached her husband.
“When I learned he was alive, I saw a ray of light in the darkness,” she told the AP. The couple has two children, ages 8 and 10.
Video from the scene showed rescuers carrying Gil Flores on a stretcher covered with an orange tarp through cheering crowds before loading him into a Red Cross ambulance. Members of the Costa Rican Red Cross hugged one another after the rescue.
The operation was led by Chilean firefighters and included search-and-rescue teams from Costa Rica, the United States, Portugal, Mexico and other countries.
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The shopping center collapsed after twin earthquakes measuring magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5 struck northern Venezuela on June 24, destroying tens of thousands of buildings, killing more than 2,200 people and injuring more than 11,000 others.
Gil Flores’ rescue offered a rare moment of hope after days of devastation.
On Tuesday, emergency workers rescued a 2-year-old boy who had been trapped beneath the rubble for six days.
On Saturday, the U.S. State Department shared video showing American search-and-rescue teams pulling a 9-month-old girl alive from a collapsed structure. The infant was rescued along with her mother, the State Department told Fox News Digital. Both suffered only minor injuries, according to the rescue team.
The U.S. government has mobilized $150 million in humanitarian aid to help Venezuela respond to the disaster.
Fox News Digital’s Michael Sinkewicz and Peter D’Abrosca, along with The Associated Press, contributed to this report.
