Rescuers Free Security Guard After Eight Days Under Venezuela Mall Rubble as Death Toll Tops 2,200

Rescuers pulled Hernán Alberto Gil Flores, 44, from under the rubble of a collapsed shopping mall parking lot in La Guaira, Venezuela, on Thursday. CNN reported that he had been buried under 29 feet of wreckage for eight days after the earthquakes. Gil Flores worked as a security guard at the Galerias Playa Grande shopping mall.

CNN reported that rescuers first received word of a possible survivor on Sunday and confirmed his presence with radar sonar and sound detection equipment. Teams from about half a dozen countries spent three days clearing a passage and supplying him with water, food, and medication through a hose and syringe.

Video from the Chile Fire Department showed Gil Flores waving his fingers through a gap in the concrete on Wednesday.

A later video posted Thursday captured his head and shoulders emerging from the debris while he wore a mask over a bloodshot eye. CNN reported that he told rescuers he was not hurt but uncomfortable because of the rocks. His wife, Usbimar Gonzales, told CNN she had experienced days of great sorrow until learning he was alive.

She said she then saw a ray of sunshine and noted that their children were waiting at home. The Chile Fire Department described the operation as highly complex because of the unstable structure and falling debris. Sebastián Mocorquer of the United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination team stated on Thursday that only miraculous rescues had been achieved seven days after an earthquake.

National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez announced Wednesday that at least 2,295 people had died in the earthquakes, an increase of about 350 from the previous day. An anonymous forensic pathologist told CNN the makeshift morgue in La Guaira was processing around 400 bodies a day.