After being trapped for eight days beneath the rubble of a collapsed shopping centre, 43-year-old security guard Hernan Alberto Gil Flores was pulled out alive on Thursday following a painstaking rescue operation that lasted more than 100 hours.
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Gil Flores had been buried since twin earthquakes struck Venezuela on June 24, destroying the Galerias Playa Grande shopping centre in La Guaira. He survived because the small security cabin where he was working during the night shift remained intact, creating a pocket of air even as the surrounding concrete structure gave way.
Rescuers first detected signs of life over the weekend, when a specialised Costa Rican Red Cross team established contact with him. From then on, the mission shifted from a search operation to an intricate technical rescue.
Working around the clock, teams from Venezuela, Chile, Costa Rica, the United States, Portugal, Mexico and El Salvador carefully tunneled through an unstable maze of concrete while navigating aftershocks and heavy rain. Every move was calculated to avoid triggering another collapse.
A telescopic camera lowered through a narrow opening allowed rescuers to maintain constant visual contact with Gil Flores throughout the operation. Using the same shaft, they supplied him with water and liquid nutrients, keeping him hydrated and alive well beyond the typical 48- to 72-hour survival window for earthquake rescues.
Chilean firefighter Maria Paz Campos remained in constant communication with him during the final hours, reassuring him and guiding him through the rescue. In footage released before he was freed, she gently instructed him through the camera: "I need you to keep the goggles on, for the small particles that are falling, to avoid them getting into your eye."
After more than four days of continuous excavation, rescuers finally reached Gil Flores early Thursday. Covered in dust and wearing an oxygen mask, he was carefully lifted onto a stretcher and carried through cheering rescue workers before being taken to an ambulance for medical evaluation.
Costa Rican Red Cross rescuer Minyar Collado later revealed the emotional exchange after first making contact with him. "When we found him, he asked us not to tell his wife that he was alive, just in case he wouldn't make it," Collado said, adding, "We were never going to leave him here."
Later, his wife, Gusbimar Gonzalez, said the news that rescuers had reached him transformed days of despair into hope. "When I learned he was alive, I saw a ray of light in the darkness," she said.
The rescue has emerged as one of the few moments of hope following the devastating earthquakes, which killed more than 2,200 people and left thousands injured across northern Venezuela.
