LA GUAIRA, Venezuela: Tens of thousands of people desperately sought food and shelter in Venezuela on Tuesday after the two earthquakes killed nearly 2,000, but rescue teams managed to pull a 3-year-old boy alive from the rubble six days after the shocks.
Last week’s 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude shocks — one of the worst earthquake disasters in Latin American history — collapsed whole residential complexes, left tens of thousands unaccounted for and prompted frantic search-and-rescue operations for survivors trapped in the ruins.
Hopes were fading fast for more rescues, but nearly a week after the quakes, a Jordanian civil defense team dug the three-year-old boy from the wreckage of a house in Caracas.
Video footage online showed rescue workers cheering with joy on discovering the child, whose vital signs were good, the Jordanian civil defense said in a statement.
The critical 72-hour window during which survivors were still likely to be found closed on Saturday evening.
