VENEZUELA: Hundreds of rescuers continued working late into Wednesday in a desperate effort to save a 43-year-old Venezuelan man who has survived for an entire week beneath the rubble of a collapsed seven-storey building, an AFP reporter witnessed.
Hernan Gil, a security guard, remains trapped inside his security booth beneath the building where he worked in Catia La Mar, a coastal area that was almost completely destroyed by the twin earthquakes measuring 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude on June 24.
Rescue teams from seven countries — Venezuela, Chile, the United States, Portugal, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Mexico — have been working around the clock for the past three days to reach him.
By late Wednesday, rescuers told AFP they were less than one metre away from Gil’s location.
Chile’s fire service shared an Instagram video showing Gil inside the confined space, moving his head to look toward the camera. He was wearing a face mask, and his right eye appeared bloodshot.
Calling his survival extraordinary, Gil’s wife, Gusbimar Gonzalez, told AFP, “This is truly a miracle.”
“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 added.
The rescue effort came at the end of a day when hopes of finding additional survivors had largely faded, seven days after the devastating earthquakes that killed nearly 2,300 people and left thousands more unaccounted for.
As firefighters moved closer to Gil’s location, other emergency personnel monitored the movement of a neighbouring building, which remains at risk of collapsing.
Since Monday, rescue teams have reinforced the damaged structure’s foundations with wood and iron supports to prevent the unstable building from collapsing further.
Throughout the operation, rescuers have supplied Gil with water to keep him hydrated and installed an air tube to ensure he continues receiving oxygen. Teams have been advancing along two separate routes simultaneously in an effort to reach him.
“This is a rather complicated structure to access,” Cristian Vera, leader of the Chilean rescue team, told AFP.
He explained that the presence of “very large pillars” made it difficult to reach Gil’s exact location. An initial plan to dig a 60-by-60-centimetre tunnel was abandoned on Tuesday after 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 said.