Father and Son Rescued After Four Days Trapped Under Rubble
A father and his son were pulled alive from the rubble of a collapsed building in La Guaira, Venezuela, on Sunday, four days after a devastating earthquake struck the region. The rescue, which took 12 hours of painstaking effort, gave fresh hope to French and U.S. rescue workers racing against time to find more survivors.
The coastal state of La Guaira was the hardest hit by the earthquake on Wednesday, which left at least 1,450 dead and thousands missing. Rescuers used specialized search cameras to locate the pair, carefully working through unstable debris to reach them.
Rescue Operation Details
Rescue workers carried the father and son, both visibly weakened and wearing masks, on improvised fabric stretchers through debris-strewn streets to a waiting ambulance. A crowd gathered around the emergency vehicles as the pair were transported for medical care.
“They are extremely weak, as any patient trapped under rubble for four days would be, so we are doing everything possible to rehydrate them and administer various medications during the extraction process, which is moving very slowly,” said a member of the French Civil Security team involved in the rescue.
International Rescue Teams on the Ground
The rescue team in La Guaira includes members of the French Civil Security and American responders from the Fairfax County Urban Search and Rescue Team in Virginia. Just a day earlier, the same team rescued a mother and her 9-month-old baby from the rubble.
Before extracting the father and son, rescuers prepared intravenous drips and cleared debris. Other team members remained beside the rubble, searching for signs of life and communicating with colleagues among the ruins.
Ongoing Search Efforts and Challenges
At least 33 people were rescued over the weekend, but tens of thousands remain missing, heightening fears that time is running out to find survivors. According to specialists, after 72 hours following an earthquake, the odds of finding victims alive beneath the rubble drop dramatically.
The rescue of the father and son provides a glimmer of hope as international teams continue to comb through the devastation, using every available resource to locate and extract survivors.
