Rescue workers in La Guaira carried a father and his son out of a collapsed building on Sunday, four days after powerful earthquakes struck parts of Venezuela. The two were alive but severely weakened when they were brought through debris-strewn streets on improvised fabric stretchers to a waiting ambulance, as local residents and responders gathered at the scene.
The extraction followed roughly 12 hours of painstaking operations. Teams carefully cleared material and used specialized search cameras to locate the trapped pair, then worked slowly through unstable rubble to reach them. Before the final pull, rescuers set up intravenous drips and removed debris to prepare the victims for removal.
A member of the French Civil Security described the condition of the rescued men: they were "extremely weak, as any patient trapped under rubble for four days would be," and teams focused on rehydration and administering medications while moving them out. Colleagues remained beside other unstable sections of the building, maintaining communications with one another and continuing the search for signs of life.
The response in that area includes members of the French Civil Security alongside American responders from the Fairfax County Urban Search and Rescue Team in Virginia. Those U.S. responders had earlier, the previous day, recovered a mother and her 9-month-old baby from similar conditions.
La Guaira lies within the coastal state identified as the hardest hit by the earthquakes that began four days earlier. Officials say the tremors have resulted in at least 1,450 fatalities and left thousands unaccounted for. Over the weekend, at least 33 people were rescued in the affected regions, even as authorities warned that tens of thousands remain missing.
Specialists involved in search and rescue note that the probability of finding survivors drops sharply after 72 hours following a major quake, a factor underscoring the urgency of the ongoing operations. Teams from multiple countries continue to press forward, working methodically amid unstable structures to try to locate anyone still trapped.
Contextual note: The rescue of the father and son provided a moment of relief for international and local crews working in extremely challenging conditions, but the scale of missing persons and the time elapsed since the earthquakes keep the search effort under severe time pressure.