Rescue workers attend to Hernán 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. (Photo: AP)
A security guard has been rescued alive eight days after twin earthquakes brought down the building where he worked.
Rescue teams freed Hernán Gil more than 100 hours after they first located him buried under 140 tonnes of rubble. A Chilean firefighter called it one of the hardest rescue jobs of his career, the BBC reported.
The earthquakes hit Venezuela on June 24. Close to 2,300 people have died, and tens of thousands remain missing.
How rescuers found him
Hernán Gil was on duty in a small concrete guard booth in the basement parking area next to the Galerias Playa Grande mall when the quakes hit. That booth appears to have shielded him from the collapsed rubble above and around him.
Allan Madrigal, a paramedic with the Costa Rican Red Cross, was the one who first heard Gil’s cries for help on Sunday. He said he didn’t trust his own ears at first and asked a coworker to check.
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“It was an emotional moment,” Madrigal said, per BBC News.
Teams from Venezuela, Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Mexico, Portugal, and the United States worked together to reach Gil. Parts of the access tunnels they built collapsed more than once, putting both Gil and the rescuers at risk.
Overnight, crews got their first visual confirmation that Gil was alive, using a small camera pushed into the rubble. A Chilean firefighter asked him to turn toward the camera. He had one bloodshot eye and wore a mask that rescuers had passed to him earlier to keep dust out of his lungs.
A Costa Rican Red Cross worker said Gil told them he didn’t even have a broken nail. Rescuers gave him water and hooked him up to an IV drip while digging continued.
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Marco Antonio Franco of the Mexican Red Cross described Gil as upbeat throughout the ordeal. He said Gil even asked for specific drink flavors, and the team brought them, according to comments Franco gave to Mexican outlet Milenio and cited by BBC News.
Franco said Gil recognized rescue workers and encouraged them to keep going.
Madrigal, who was on his first international rescue mission, said the experience changed him.
“The lad who came here a week ago is not the same one that will return to Costa Rica,” he told reporters.
