Rescue teams in Venezuela race to save security guard trapped under building that collapsed during earthquakes

Nearly a week after two back-to-back earthquakes struck northern Venezuela, international rescue teams, including from the U.S., are still working around the clock to save people trapped under the rubble — like 44-year-old security guard Hernan Gil Flores.

Gil Flores has been trapped under a partially collapsed 10-story building in La Guaira for six days.  

“It is a very complex rescue,” Manny Sampang, a task force leader from the Los Angeles County Fire Department who is in Venezuela to help with rescue efforts, told CBS News. “I have multiple buildings leaning into that building that we are trying to rescue him from.”

Rescuers believe Gil Flores is still inside the security booth in the underground parking garage. Rescue teams have been moving carefully, concerned that parts of the building could collapse again.  

His wife, Gusbimar Gonzalez, told CBS News the rescue team has made contact with her husband. She said he is not injured and they’ve been able to get him water. 

The confirmed death toll from the 7.5 and 7.2 magnitude quakes, which struck within a minute of each other just after 6 p.m. local time on June 24, was more than 1,900 as of Tuesday. Tens of thousands remain missing, according to the United Nations.

Rescuers have been finding small miracles amid the rubble, including the rescue of an 18-day-old baby, who, along with his mother, was pulled from a collapsed high-rise after they were both trapped for 32 hours. In another instance, a mother and her 9-month-old baby were pulled from the rubble of a collapsed building with “only minor injuries,” Virginia Urban Search and Rescue Task Force 1 said at the time.

Venezuelan officials say some 6,400 people have been rescued so far.

Estimates from NASA satellite data indicate nearly 59,000 buildings were likely damaged or collapsed entirely across the affected region. The U.N. says 1.8 million people, nearly 700,000 of whom are children, are in need of humanitarian assistance.

The worst of the destruction is concentrated in La Guaira, on Venezuela’s coast. The devastation has forced many residents, like Marianae Hernandez, to flee inland to the Venezuelan capital of Caracas in hopes of finding shelter.

Hernandez told CBS News her home was destroyed and she has nothing left. Now, she, her mother and her three children are living in tents.

“I’m trying to be strong because I have children and I don’t like them to see me cry,” she said. “What we are going through right now is very difficult.”