Father, son pulled from rubble of Venezuela’s earthquakes as crucial rescue window closes

Rescue of man and his teen son offers hope to rescuers racing against the clock to find more survivors of twin quakes that left at least 1,450 dead, tens of thousands missing

LA GUAIRA, Venezuela — A father and his son were pulled out alive from the rubble of a collapsed building on Sunday, four days after the devastating earthquakes that struck Venezuela.

It was a scene that gave hope to the French and US rescue workers active in the area as they raced against the clock to find more survivors of the powerful twin earthquakes that struck Venezuela on Wednesday.

Rescue workers carried the pair, visibly weakened and both wearing masks, on improvised fabric stretchers through debris-strewn streets to a waiting ambulance, as a crowd gathered around the emergency vehicles in La Guaira.

The coastal state was hardest hit by the earthquakes that left at least 1,450 dead and tens of thousands missing.

The rescue of the man and his teen son in Caraballeda, north of Caracas, came after 12 hours of painstaking efforts by teams that combed through the ruins using specialized search cameras, carefully working through unstable rubble to reach the trapped victims.

“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.

The rescue team in that area includes members of the French Civil Security and American responders from the Fairfax County Urban Search and Rescue Team in Virginia, who, the previous day, rescued a mother and her 9-month-old baby.

Before extracting the family members, rescuers prepared intravenous drips and cleared debris. Others remained beside the rubble searching for signs of life and communicating with their colleagues among the remains.

At least 33 people were rescued over the weekend, though 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, and the search usually becomes one of recovering bodies.

Rescue teams from the United States, Mexico and elsewhere scrambled to save people as desperate residents dug by hand for relatives trapped in the pancaked layers and rubble of collapsed apartments.

In the San Bernardino neighborhood of Caracas, volunteers clambered over a collapsed building, using drills to break up concrete and forming lines to remove rubble by hand.

In Chacao, another area of the capital, large electronic screens on a building usually used for advertising were showing the faces of missing people in a bid to help find them.

Some 774 buildings were badly damaged in the back-to-back quakes of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 that struck on Wednesday evening, including 189 buildings that have totally collapsed, National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez said Sunday.

The ongoing tragedy has shaken a country already mired in an economic crisis, and millions of people were feared to lack sanitation and other basic needs after one of Latin America’s most devastating earthquake disasters.

Even as rescue efforts continued apace, outbreaks of looting hit La Guaira, much of which now lies in rubble after Wednesday’s disaster.

Pharmacies, supermarkets and other businesses were ransacked, said residents, some of whom complained of the slow and meager post-quake aid coming from authorities.

“The country needs you. Put down your weapon,” one man shouted to soldiers in the Tanaguarena area of La Guaira, urging them to pick up picks and shovels instead.

Interim Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez on Sunday praised rescuers for still pulling survivors from the ruins, and thanked other countries for the outpouring of aid.

According to Rodriguez, 24 nations have sent 521 tons of supplies, 86 units with dogs trained to locate people trapped beneath the rubble and more than 2,700 search-and-rescue personnel.

“Today we have rescued people who are still alive, and therefore these efforts will not be suspended,” she said.

“We always hold onto hope.”