Against the odds: Rescuers close in on Venezuelan man buried for seven days under quake rubble

CATIA LA MAR, Venezuela – Hundreds of rescuers were working late on July 1 to save a 43-year-old Venezuelan man who has survived for a week under the ruins of a seven-storey building, an AFP reporter witnessed.

Hernan Gil, a 43-year-old security guard, is trapped inside his booth under the building where he worked in Catia La Mar, a coastal area almost entirely razed to the ground in the June 24 twin earthquakes.

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

By late July 1, they were almost 1m from his position, rescuers told AFP.

Chile’s fire service published an Instagram video of Gil inside his chamber, moving his head to look at the camera.

He was wearing a face mask and his right eye was bloodshot.

“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.

News of the rescue bid came at the end of a day in which hope of finding more survivors had faded, seven days after the catastrophic earthquakes, which killed almost 2,300 people and have left thousands more unaccounted for.

As firefighters drew near him, others were monitoring the movements of a neighbouring building, which is in danger of collapsing.

Working since June 29, the rescuers shored up the building’s foundations with wood and iron to prevent the listing structure from collapsing further.

Throughout the operation, they gave Gil water to keep him hydrated and installed a tube through which they supplied him with air.

The rescuers advanced along two routes simultaneously to reach Gil.

“This is a rather complicated structure to access,” Cristian Vera, leader of the Chilean rescue team, told AFP.

He said the existence of “very large pillars” meant “it wasn’t easy to reach the exact spot where the victim was located”.

An initial plan to construct a 60cm-by-60cm tunnel was discarded on June 30, when the building shifted slightly.

“We had to develop a new work plan to try to enter through a different route than the one we had used until last night,” Vera explained. AFP