Venezuela Earthquake: Survivor Pulled From Rubble 8 Days Later as US Deportees Buried
Rescue teams in Venezuela clung to hope Thursday as they pulled a 43-year-old security guard alive from the rubble of a collapsed shopping mall in Catia La Mar, nearly eight days after twin tremors struck the Caribbean coast, turning the region into a landscape of flattened buildings and mass graves.
The near-miraculous survival of Hernan Gilberto Flores was celebrated by crowds and emergency workers from 10 countries who gathered at the site. He survived in an air pocket beneath the concrete, sustained by food and water that rescuers passed through crevices in the debris.
A Rescue Miracle in the Rubble
National broadcasters ran footage all day of the moment he was pried free and lifted into a stretcher as crowds cheered and embraced. The Chilean rescue team that extracted him worked alongside teams from Argentina, France, Vietnam and the United States.
But elsewhere across the hardest-hit state of La Guaira, where thousands remain missing, an air of hopelessness was setting in. The port city of Catia La Mar teemed with officials carrying body bags and stacking caskets. The government of acting President Delcy Rodriguez has counted at least 2,295 people killed and more than 11,000 injured.
US Deportees Caught in the Disaster
Hours before the twin tremors struck on June 24, Daniel Alejandro Nunez Ramirez, 28, landed in Caracas on a deportation flight carrying more than a hundred Venezuelan migrants expelled from the United States. He had applied for asylum in the U.S. after arriving in 2022 and built a life in Florida before being taken into immigration custody in May.
From the airport, Nunez Ramirez and fellow deportees were ferried to a hotel in La Guaira. Around 30 minutes after he spoke with his mother, Oswaldez Nunez, the hotel building began to shake.
“That is when I found out my son had arrived — that he had a number, that he was wearing a bracelet, like a prisoner, and that they were moving him around in handcuffs,” Nunez told the Associated Press. Most of the deportees were buried beneath the rubble.
On Monday, she received a call asking her to retrieve her son’s remains at a morgue in La Guaira. “My son was not a criminal. Why do they treat people with no criminal record like criminals?” she said, holding a red box of his ashes. “I want this death not to go unpunished.”
Political Uncertainty Over Rodriguez’s Leadership
Faced with complaints that foreign crews and civilians have shouldered most of the rescue efforts, Rodriguez sought to defend the government response a day before the extension of her 180-day mandate as acting leader was set to expire.
Rodriguez served as de facto leader since January when former President Nicolas Maduro was removed from power. She became interim leader with the backing of the Trump administration. Under Venezuela’s constitution, temporary absences are to be filled by the vice president for up to 90 days, a provision Rodriguez’s allies are citing to extend her mandate.
The U.S. has committed over $300 million in assistance to the response. John M. Bartlett, the U.S. charge d’affaires to Venezuela, said Wednesday that revenue from Venezuelan oil production, controlled by the U.S. Treasury since Maduro’s removal, is being made available for relief efforts. With thousands sleeping in crowded shelters and doctors warning of a widening medical crisis, the survival of one man offered a moment of respite in an otherwise catastrophic week for Venezuela.
