Rescue workers attend Hernan Alberto Gil Flores after he was pulled from the rubble eight days after being trapped by two earthquakes that struck Catia la Mar, Venezuela (AP Photo)
After being trapped for eight days under the rubble of a collapsed shopping mall, 43-year-old security guard Hernan Alberto Gil Flores was recovered alive on Thursday after an exhausting rescue operation that lasted more than 100 hours.Gil Flores had been buried since two earthquakes struck Venezuela on June 24, destroying the Galerias Playa Grande shopping center in La Guaira. He survived because the small security booth he worked in during the night shift remained intact, creating a pocket of air even as the surrounding concrete structure collapsed.Rescuers first discovered signs of life over the weekend, when a specialist team from the Costa Rican Red Cross contacted him.
Since then, the mission has transformed from a search operation into a complex technical rescue operation.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 torrential rain. Each step was calculated to avoid causing 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 pole, they supplied it with water and liquid nutrients, keeping it hydrated and alive much longer than the typical 48 to 72 hour survival period for earthquake rescues.Chilean firefighter Maria Paz Campos remained in constant contact with him during the last hours, to reassure him and guide him during the rescue operation. In footage released before his release, she gently directed him through the camera: “I want you to put on your protective glasses, to avoid small particles that fall, to avoid getting them into your eyes.”After more than four days of continuous digging, rescuers finally reached Gil Flores early Thursday. Covered in dust and wearing an oxygen mask, he was carefully lifted onto a stretcher and carried by jubilant rescuers before being transferred to an ambulance for a medical assessment.Minear Collado, a Costa Rican Red Cross rescuer, later revealed the emotional exchange after he first contacted him. “When we found him, he asked us not to tell his wife that he was alive, just in case he didn’t survive,” Collado said, adding: “We would never leave him here.”Later, his wife, Josepimar Gonzalez, said that the news of the arrival of rescuers turned his days of despair into hope. “When I knew he was alive, I saw a ray of light in the darkness,” she said.The rescue operation emerged as one of the few moments of hope in the wake of devastating earthquakes that killed more than 2,200 people and injured thousands in northern Venezuela.