Venezuelan man rescued from rubble 8 days after deadly quakes: ‘truly a miracle’
Teams from seven countries worked for days to reach security guard Hernan Gil, who was dug out from the ruins of a collapsed building
Hundreds of rescuers in Venezuela cheered and embraced on Thursday after pulling a 43-year-old man alive from the ruins of a collapsed building eight days after deadly twin earthquakes.
With the official death toll nearing 2,300 and huge numbers of people still missing, the rescue of security guard Hernan Gil after so long under the rubble was greeted as a miracle.
Gil was brought out on a stretcher after a painstaking operation to extract him from the collapsed seven-storey building where he worked in Catia La Mar, a coastal area almost entirely razed to the ground in the June 24 catastrophe.
“This is truly a miracle,” Gil’s wife Gusbimar Gonzalez said.
Teams from seven countries – Venezuela, Chile, the United States, Portugal, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Mexico – worked around the clock over three days to reach Gil.
They provided him with more than 10 litres (21 US pints) of water to keep him hydrated via a hose and installed a tube to provide him with oxygen.