Four survivors were dramatically rescued 11 days after a series of earthquakes struck Venezuela, local daily El Nacional reported Thursday.
According to the report, rescue authorities pulled four survivors from the rubble of a building in the Caraballeda area of La Guaira state around 9 p.m. the previous night. The rescue came 267 hours after the earthquakes struck, nearly four times the 72-hour golden hour typically regarded as the survival threshold in disaster medicine.
Confirmed as one young man, one young woman and two children, they received first aid at the site where they had been buried before being immediately loaded into ambulances and transported to hospitals. Video of the rescue that spread on social media captured voices of rescue workers urging the survivors to stay calm and warning them not to move while safe rescue methods were sought.
Earlier, on Sunday, a security guard in his 40s was rescued about 190 hours after the earthquakes from the collapse site of the Galerias Playa Grande shopping center in La Guaira. At the time, he had been in a small security room, and although the surrounding concrete structures collapsed, the security room withstood the external pressure and secured the minimum space needed for survival, authorities determined.
Despite the miraculous rescue news, casualties continue to rise. Jorge Rodriguez, president of Venezuela's National Assembly, said in an announcement Wednesday that the cumulative death toll and injured had reached 3,342 and 16,740, respectively. The number of people rescued was tallied at 6,462, and displaced people at 17,345.
The earthquakes were a series of powerful tremors measuring magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 that occurred in Yaracuy state on Nov. 24, striking six northern states including the capital Caracas, with coastal La Guaira state hit hardest. At least 995 aftershocks have been observed since the earthquakes struck through Thursday. An estimated 1.25 million tons of debris was generated in the Caraballeda area of La Guaira state alone, with 856 buildings damaged, of which 190 collapsed.
With no additional survivors found, the recovery phase has begun locally. The United Nations handed over leadership of the rescue response to Venezuela's civil defense authorities beginning Tuesday, and a considerable number of international rescue teams have completed their missions and withdrawn. At a cemetery in Catia La Mar in La Guaira state, north of Caracas, at least 150 unidentified bodies were buried.
More than 31,000 people remain registered as missing on a citizens' missing persons reporting site, and experts predicted that recovering the bodies would take about three months.
