Venezuelan man saved from collapsed mall eight days after earthquakes

Rescue workers attend to Hernán Alberto Gil Flores after he was pulled from the rubble. Photograph: Fernando Vergara/AP View image in fullscreen Rescue workers attend to Hernán Alberto Gil Flores after he was pulled from the rubble. Photograph: Fernando Vergara/AP Venezuelan man saved from collapsed mall eight days after earthquakes Security guard Hernán Alberto Gil Flores, 43, initially told rescuers not to tell his wife in case he did not survive A 43-year-old security guard who survived last week’s devastating earthquakes in Venezuela thanks to a pocket of air in his workstation cabin has been pulled from the collapsed basement of a shopping centre amid huge cheers from international rescue teams. Hernán Alberto Gil Flores had been trapped for eight days under the rubble of the Galerías Playa Grande in the hard-hit coastal port city of La Guaira since the back-to-back quakes struck. The 7.2- and 7.5-magnitude earthquakes killed almost 2,200 people, injured more than 11,000 others and left tens of thousands missing. The aftermath of the earthquakes in Venezuela – in pictures Read more Gil Flores, who worked as a nightshift security guard at the shopping centre, was inside his small security cabin when the first violent tremor struck. While the surrounding concrete structure collapsed around him, his cabin shielded him from crushing debris and created a vital pocket of air. A specialised team from the Costa Rican Red Cross (CRRC) first detected signs of life and established contact with him on Sunday. “When we found him, he asked us not to tell his wife that he was alive, just in case he wouldn’t make it,” Minyar Collado, a member of the CRRC team told the Associated Press. View image in fullscreen Teams from across the world cheer as rescuers carry Gil Flores on a stretcher through throngs of people into a Red Cross ambulance. Photograph: Fernando Vergara/AP But, four days later on Thursday, teams carrying flags from across the world cheered as rescuers carried Gil Flores on a stretcher covered in an orange tarp through throngs of people into a Red Cross ambulance. A group of men in red CRRC uniforms embraced and laughed in relief. Gil Flores’s wife, Gusbimar González, said her despair had given way to hope when she heard he was still alive. “I saw a ray of light in the darkness,” González said. The operation was coordinated by an urban search and rescue team of Chilean firefighters, who worked around the clock with specialist teams from the US, Portugal and Mexico, among others. Rescuers had to navigate highly unstable structural conditions, torrential rain and persistent aftershocks to tunnel down to Gil Flores. They used a telescopic camera to maintain constant contact with him, passing water and liquid nutrients through a narrow shaft to keep him hydrated during the final three days of the extraction. María Paz Campos, a veteran firefighter from Chile, talked the security guard through the entire operation, and kept him calm during the fina