International rescue teams from El Salvador and Chile have rescued 43-year-old security guard Hernán Alberto Gil Flores from the collapsed basement of a shopping centre in La Guaira, Venezuela. Gil Flores had been trapped for eight days under the rubble of the nine-story Galerías Playa Grande following a pair of devastating earthquakes. He was pulled from the ruins on Thursday to the cheers of rescuers, who carried him away on a stretcher.
The security guard survived by remaining in a pocket of air within his workstation cabin. Rescuers first made contact with him over the weekend and spent three days working around the clock to free him, passing water and liquid nutrients through a narrow shaft. During the operation, Gil Flores initially asked rescuers not to inform his wife of his situation in case he did not survive.
The rescue was hailed as a miracle amid a larger tragedy. On June 24, back-to-back earthquakes with magnitudes of 7.2 and 7.5 struck northern Venezuela, leaving La Guaira as the hardest-hit region. The disaster destroyed tens of thousands of buildings, leaving 13,000 people homeless and claiming at least 2,295 lives.