A man has been rescued alive after being trapped for eight days in the rubble of a building that collapsed after twin earthquakes in Venezuela.
Emergency workers managed to free Hernán Gil more than 100 hours after they had first located him under 140 tonnes of rubble.
A Chilean firefighter had earlier described the rescue operation as “without doubt the most complex and technically difficult which I’ve had to tackle”.
As of Thursday evening, 2,595 people are confirmed to have died in the quakes which hit Venezuela on 24 June, and tens of thousands are still missing.
Allan Madrigal, a paramedic with the Costa Rican Red Cross, told journalists at the site that Gil had “emerged just perfect” from the ordeal.
Madrigal is the rescuer who heard Gil’s faint cries for help emerging from the rubble on Sunday.
“It was an emotional moment,” he recalled, explaining that at first he had not trusted his own ears and asked a colleague to confirm that he “wasn’t just imagining it”.
From that moment on, rescuers raced to try and dig the security guard out.
Gil had been on duty in a small concrete booth in the basement of the parking lot adjacent to the Galerias Playa Grande mall in Catia La Mar when the twin quakes struck.
It appears that the booth created a shell around him, protecting him from the 140 tonnes of rubble which collapsed around and on top of him.
“He has told us that he does not even have a crushed nail,” another Costa Rican Red Cross worker said shortly before Gil was pulled from the rubble.
Gil had been given water and medics had attached him to an intravenous drip while teams from Venezuela, Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Mexico, Portugal and the United States worked to free him.
Parts of the access ducts rescuers built to reach him collapsed several times, highlighting the dangers the work posed to the rescuers as well as Gil.
Overnight, the search teams were finally able to establish visual contact with the survivor.
In footage recorded by a small camera inserted into the rubble where Gil was trapped, a Chilean firefighter could be heard asking him to turn his head towards the camera.
One of his eyes was bloodshot and he was wearing a face mask, which rescuers had earlier passed to him through a small hole to protect him from the dust and debris created by their efforts to free him.
The firefighter also asked him to don goggles to protect his eyes as rescuers continued to carefully dig away at the rubble surrounding him.
Marco Antonio Franco from the Mexican Red Cross described Gil as “a cheerful man”.
He told Mexican news site Milenio that the survivor “even asked for hydration drinks of specific flavours he likes”, adding that “of course we indulged him”.
“He himself drives us on, telling us to carry on. He recognises our team members, saying ‘how nice that you came back and that you’re with me again’.”
According to Franco, the rescuers and Gil kept up a steady chatter about his family and about the challenging rescue.
Madrigal, the paramedic who located Gil, was on his first international rescue mission and said the work he had carried out in Venezuela had changed him.
“The lad who came here a week ago is not the same one that will return to Costa Rica, believe me,” he told reporters.
