Rescuers battle to unearth Venezuelan man eight days after quakes

CATIA LA MAR, Venezuela: Hundreds of rescuers struggled Thursday to unearth a 43-year-old Venezuelan man trapped for eight days under a collapsed building after twin earthquakes killed almost 2,300 people, an AFP reporter witnessed.

An international rescue team inched closer to Hernan Gil, a security guard buried inside his booth under the seven-story 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 told AFP.

“I’m completely amazed because it’s the first time I’ve seen so many countries come together like this to save a single person,” she said.

Rescue teams from seven countries — Venezuela, Chile, the United States, Portugal, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Mexico — have been working around-the-clock over the past three days to reach him.

They were almost one meter (three feet) from his position overnight, rescuers told AFP, but working carefully to avoid the further collapse of nearby structures damaged in the quakes.

“This is a rather complicated structure to access,” Cristian Vera, the leader of the Chilean rescue team told AFP. “It wasn’t easy to reach the exact spot where the victim was located.”

Though hopes rose for one man’s rescue, Venezuela faces a disaster that has left many without shelter and desperately short on food. In addition to the dead, tens of thousands of people remain unaccounted for.

Venezuela’s interim president Delcy Rodriguez declared seven days of mourning, saying the country’s “soul is torn apart by the human losses.”

The majority of collapsed buildings in the hardest-hit city of La Guaira, just north of Caracas, have been marked with the letter ‘D’ for ‘deceased’ — a sign they had been searched with no signs of life found.

“Time isn’t wasted in a place where there is no expectation of recovering people alive,” said Javier Rodes, the coordinator of a Spanish rescue team whose sniffer dog Nala searched in vain through the rubble for traces of life.

There have been miracle survivors, such as a three-year-old boy found alive Tuesday, six days after Venezuela’s most powerful quake in over a century.

But experts say trapped victims are unlikely to survive more than 72 hours.

“No one is coming out of here, alive or dead,” said Jose Rafael, standing among the ruins where his son is missing in the town of Caraballeda in La Guaira state.

Venezuela’s National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez said Wednesday that the number of deaths had risen to 2,295, and more than 11,000 people were injured.

He said almost 13,000 people had been left homeless.

The United Nations estimates 50,000 people are missing.

The two powerful quakes, measuring 7.2 and 7.5, shattered entire neighborhoods in oil-rich Venezuela, which has suffered decades of economic crisis that devastated infrastructure and health services.

The country is in a fragile transition six months after the United States ousted leader Nicolas Maduro, and lives under constant pressure from Washington for access to Venezuela’s oil and other natural resources.

The United States has around 2,000 personnel assisting in the response, General Francis Donovan, the head of US Southern Command, told journalists Wednesday.

International rescue teams arrived from around the globe to dig out survivors but locals are furious at the absence of the state in the aftermath of the disaster.