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A guard freed after 8 days
Rescuers pulled Hernan Alberto Gil Flores, a 43-year-old security guard, alive from a collapsed basement at the Galerias Playa Grande shopping centre in La Guaira eight days after twin earthquakes struck Venezuela on June 24.
“Hernan Alberto Gil Flores was extracted safely after being trapped since June 24”
The rescue ended a days-long operation after teams made contact over the weekend, and Costa Rican Red Cross rescuer Minyar Collado told The Associated Press that “When we found him, he asked us not to tell his wife that he was alive, just in case he wouldn’t make it,” as rescuers carried him into a Red Cross ambulance.
The collapse was triggered by two back-to-back earthquakes on June 24 that registered magnitudes of 7.2 and 7.5, and the shallow tremors damaged or destroyed tens of thousands of buildings across northern Venezuela, killing more than 2,200 people and injuring over 11,000.
Acting Venezuelan president Delcy Rodriguez celebrated the rescue on social media, writing on X, “We celebrate the greatness of humanity, when it is united for a single purpose: to save another.”
The operation was coordinated by an urban search and rescue team of Chilean firefighters and used a telescopic camera to keep constant contact, while passing water and liquid nutrients through a narrow shaft during the final three days of extraction.
Civilians, aid, and accusations
As search efforts continued, Alexander Delgado described running a rescue crew staffed by neighbours and out-of-state volunteers tunnelling into the rubble of a public housing development in La Guaira, saying citizens were trying to supplement what they described as a slow and inadequate state response.
Delgado said, “You see the firefighters, (Mexican rescue team) Los Topos, but you do not see the state per se,” while his team spent five days shifting rubble and listening for sounds of life under the hot Caribbean sun.
The report also described challenges thwarting efforts by some members of the Venezuelan military and police to block aid, co-opt donations and even loot from collapsed buildings, and it quoted a government warning to ignore “manipulation strategies on social networks” and rely on official information.
Venezuelans vented frustration online, and one government employee stationed at a checkpoint in La Guaira told Reuters they witnessed police officers and military personnel commandeer aid from three trucks carrying supplies and brag about what they had managed to “score.”
The same account said four crime scene police officials were detained and removed from their jobs and would be investigated for “appropriating financial assets acquired amid the ruins,” according to the Interior Ministry statement.
Long-term relief and missing
With search-and-rescue efforts winding down, Sergio Widder, American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee’s director for Latin America, told eJewishPhilanthropy that at least nine members of the Jewish community were believed to be dead, “between those who were actually found dead and [those still] missing.”
““between those who were actually found dead and [those still] missing.””
Widder said roughly 80 people remained displaced and unable to return home, out of more than 400 who fled to community facilities, and he described the scale of damage as “It’s death, it’s destruction, it’s trauma — a complete disaster layered on top of a country that already had very weak infrastructure,” as JDC prepared for long-term relief.
He said a four-person team including Widder was set to arrive in Caracas on Wednesday for an onsite assessment, with Widder telling eJP that there were close to 40 families displaced and needing temporary housing.
The report also said the Jewish community’s Hebraica Jewish community center campus had functioned as a major makeshift refugee camp because of access to generators keeping electricity and water running, and it reported that around 80 people remained at the JCC while others returned home or relocated.
Separately, the Standard (HK) reported that Jorge Rodriguez, the acting president’s brother and president of the National Assembly, put the number of confirmed dead at 1,719 with 5,034 injured and 15,866 left homeless, while UN humanitarian affairs chief Tom Fletcher told AFP that more than 50,000 people were missing.
