Venezuelan security guard pulled alive from building basement 8 days after twin quakes

Res­cuers pulled a 43-year-old se­cu­ri­ty guard alive from a col­lapsed base­ment ear­ly Thurs­day, end­ing a gru­el­ing days-long op­er­a­tion that be­came a sym­bol of hope af­ter the dev­as­ta­tion of twin earth­quakes that struck Venezuela eight days ear­li­er.

Hernán Al­ber­to Gil Flo­res was ex­tract­ed safe­ly af­ter be­ing trapped since June 24 un­der the rub­ble in the base­ment of the Galerías Playa Grande shop­ping cen­ter in the coastal town in La Guaira. Res­cuers ini­tial­ly made con­tact with him over the week­end.

Teams car­ry­ing flags from across the world cheered as res­cuers car­ried Gil on a stretch­er cov­ered in an or­ange tarp through throngs of peo­ple in­to a Red Cross am­bu­lance. A group of men in red Cos­ta Ri­can Red Cross uni­forms em­braced and laughed in re­lief.

Gil Flo­res, who worked as a night-shift se­cu­ri­ty guard at the com­plex, was in­side his small se­cu­ri­ty cab­in when the first vi­o­lent tremor struck. While the sur­round­ing con­crete struc­ture col­lapsed around him, his work­sta­tion cab­in held ground, shield­ing him from crush­ing de­bris and cre­at­ing a vi­tal pock­et of air.

“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.

A spe­cial­ized team from the Cos­ta Ri­can Red Cross first de­tect­ed signs of life and es­tab­lished con­tact with him on Sun­day.

His wife, Gus­bi­mar González, told the AP, that she had days of de­spair be­fore res­cuers made con­tact, but that then “ when I learned he was alive, I saw a ray of light in the dark­ness.” The cou­ple has two chil­dren, ages 8 and 10.

The op­er­a­tion was co­or­di­nat­ed by an ur­ban search and res­cue team of Chilean fire­fight­ers, who worked around the clock with spe­cial­ized teams from the Unit­ed States, Por­tu­gal and Mex­i­co, among oth­ers.

“We (were) nev­er go­ing to leave him here,” Col­la­do said be­fore the res­cue.

Res­cuers nav­i­gat­ed high­ly un­sta­ble struc­tur­al con­di­tions, tor­ren­tial rain and per­sis­tent af­ter­shocks to tun­nel down to the sur­vivor. They used a tele­scop­ic cam­era to main­tain con­stant con­tact with Gil Flo­res, pass­ing wa­ter and liq­uid nu­tri­ents through a nar­row shaft to keep him hy­drat­ed dur­ing the fi­nal three days of the ex­trac­tion.

María Paz Cam­pos, a vet­er­an fire­fight­er from Chile, talked him through the en­tire op­er­a­tion, and kept him calm dur­ing the fi­nal ex­cru­ci­at­ing hours of Thurs­day.

In a video pub­lished by the Chilean fire­fight­ers in the hours be­fore the res­cue, Gil Flo­res is seen draw­ing, seem­ing­ly to pass the time. Cam­pos then gen­tly tells him to look at the cam­era and to wear pro­tec­tive gog­gles.

“I need that you keep the gog­gles on, for the small par­ti­cles that are falling, to avoid them get­ting in­to your eye,” Cam­pos told the Venezue­lan sur­vivor.

The col­lapse of the build­ing was trig­gered by two back-to-back earth­quakes on June 24 that reg­is­tered mag­ni­tudes of 7.2 and 7.5, re­spec­tive­ly.

The shal­low, vi­o­lent tremors dam­aged or de­stroyed tens of thou­sands of build­ings across north­ern Venezuela, killing more than 2,200 peo­ple, in­jur­ing over 11,000 and leav­ing La Guaira state as the hard­est-hit re­gion in the coun­try. —CA­TIA LA MAR, Venezuela (AP)

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Sto­ry by FER­NAN­DA PESCE and JUAN PABLO AR­RAEZ | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

As­so­ci­at­ed Press video jour­nal­ists Andry Rincón and Brayan An­te­quero con­tributed to this re­port.