{"id":559972,"date":"2026-06-29T13:56:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T13:56:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/559972\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T13:56:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T13:56:15","slug":"father-and-son-rescued-after-four-days-buried-under-rubble-of-venezuelas-earthquakes-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/559972\/","title":{"rendered":"Father and son rescued after four days buried under rubble of Venezuela\u2019s earthquakes \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A father and \u200chis son were pulled out alive from the rubble of a collapsed building, four days \u200cafter the devastating earthquakes that struck Venezuela<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It was a scene that gave hope to the French and \u200bUS rescue workers active in the area as they race against the clock to find more survivors.<\/p>\n

Rescue workers carried the pair, visibly weakened and both wearing masks, on improvised fabric stretchers through debris-strewn \u200bstreets to a waiting ambulance, as a crowd gathered around the emergency vehicles in La Guaira.<\/p>\n

The \u2060coastal state was hardest hit by the earthquakes on Wednesday that left \u200cat \u200cleast \u200b1,450 dead and thousands missing.<\/p>\n

Their rescue came after 12 hours of painstaking efforts by teams that combed through the \u2060ruins using specialised search cameras, carefully \u200bworking through unstable rubble to reach \u200bthe trapped victims.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are extremely weak, as any patient trapped under rubble for four \u200cdays would be, so we are \u200bdoing everything possible to rehydrate them and administer various medications during the extraction process, \u2060which is moving very slowly,\u201d said \u2060a member \u200bof the French Civil Security.<\/p>\n

The rescue team in that area includes members of the French Civil Security and American responders from Virginia, who the previous day rescued a mother and her 9-month-old baby.<\/p>\n

Before extracting the family members, rescuers prepared intravenous drips and cleared debris. Others remained beside the rubble searching \u200cfor signs of \u2060life and communicating with their colleagues among the remains.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018They\u2019ve abandoned us\u2019: Anger as hope of finding survivors of Venezuela earthquakes fadesOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

At least 33 people were rescued over the weekend, though tens of thousands remain missing, \u200cheightening fears that time is running out to find survivors.<\/p>\n

According to specialists, after 72 hours following \u200ban earthquake, the odds of finding victims alive beneath \u200bthe rubble drop dramatically. <\/p>\n

Rescue teams raced on Sunday to find more survivors \u200cof the two powerful earthquakes that struck Venezuela this week, with signs of life bringing occasional relief to a grim quest to whittle down a list of tens of thousands missing.<\/p>\n

\"VolunteersVolunteers become emotional as they help rescue workers search for survivors in the rubble of the Residencia Rita, an apartment building that crumbled when the quakes hit in Caracas, Venezuela. Photograph: Fabiola Ferrero\/The New York Times \"DozensDozens of emergency responders and volunteers search for survivors in several collapsed buildings in the Caribe neighborhood of La Guaira, Venezuela. Photograph: Adriana Loureiro Fernandez\/The New York Times<\/p>\n

In La Guaira, the hardest-hit \u200bstate of a country long mired in a deep political and economic crisis, dozens of buildings collapsed into piles of sand and rubble.<\/p>\n

\u201cRescue and recovery efforts are ongoing. Today we have recovered people alive and, therefore, operations are not being suspended. We always maintain hope,\u201d said interim president Delcy Rodr\u00edguez, after announcing a presidential commission that would determine the habitability of buildings.<\/p>\n

Flanked by several of her ministers, Rodriguez said school classes would be suspended for one more week and the electricity supply in La Guaira had been \u200brestored to 75 per cent.<\/p>\n

The government \u2013 headed by Rodriguez since her predecessor was ousted by the US in a January raid \u2013 had thanked civilian volunteers ferrying aid to La Guaira, but then tightened access to the road, saying traffic was preventing efficient movement of emergency vehicles.<\/p>\n

Earlier, Jorge Rodriguez, the acting president\u2019s brother and president \u2060of the National Assembly, said the death toll rose by 20 people on Sunday to reach 1,450. He added that 3,150 people remained injured, 12,721 had been displaced, and 774 buildings had collapsed.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018He\u2019s under the slabs\u2019: Venezuela clings to hope in wake of devastating earthquakesOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are in \u200ccritical \u200chours, \u200bin crucial hours to continue rescuing lives and to build camps where those people who have lost their homes, or who cannot return, for whatever reason, to their residences can stay,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Families and volunteers spent days pulling survivors and bodies from the rubble before the arrival of the more than 2,600 foreign rescue workers, often complaining of scant heavy equipment \u2060and a limited official presence, as hundreds of aftershocks deepened damage and kept residents on edge.<\/p>\n

So far over \u200bthe weekend, the government said at least 33 people had been rescued by Saturday evening, including several children, while \u200btens of thousands remained unaccounted for.<\/p>\n

Although the government has given a figure of \u200chundreds missing or trapped, just under 50,000 people were listed as unaccounted for on a \u200bwebsite promoted by the country\u2019s political opposition on Sunday, a slight decline from 55,000 people a day earlier.<\/p>\n

\"AA woman wears a T-shirt reading “help me find my family” as emergency vehicles and rescuers operate near collapsed buildings in Caraballeda, La Guaira state, Venezuela. Photograph: Miguel Medina\/AFP\/Getty Images \"PeoplePeople look for the names of their family members after earthquakes struck Venezuela and other regions in the Caribbean last week. Photograph: Edilzon Gamez\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

The US Geological Survey estimated more than 10,000 deaths were possible from the magnitude 7.2 and \u20607.5 quakes, which would place them among Latin America\u2019s deadliest of the last century.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere exists a \u2060window of roughly three days, 72 hours, where the probability afterwards \u200bdecreases that you can save people alive,\u201d said Sebastian Eugster, the leader of the Swiss rescue team.<\/p>\n

The 80-strong team had found multiple people alive in the rubble thanks to alerts from their eight search dogs, but had not been able to pull them out in time to save them, he added.<\/p>\n

Saturday evening marked 72 hours since the quakes.<\/p>\n

The US state department hailed the rescue of an infant by US rescue crews on Saturday, posting a video on X showing helmet-clad rescuers removing the blanket-wrapped and wailing child from the rubble.<\/p>\n

A Colombian rescue team also saved an 11-year-old boy, Moises, who had been trapped some three meters deep in rubble, after identifying his location with a scanner.<\/p>\n

He was removed on a stretcher with a broken arm, his eyes covered by cloth to protect them from the shock of daylight. His mother and sister were killed.<\/p>\n

Mexican rescuers working at a collapsed building in the town of Caraballeda rescued another 11-year-old boy, Rodriguez posted on X late on Saturday, showing crews carrying a small figure on a stretcher out \u200cof the rubble.<\/p>\n

Pope Leo on Sunday told worshippers gathered \u2060for the Angelus prayer in Rome that he wanted \u201cto express my closeness to the Venezuelan sisters and brothers affected by the recent earthquakes\u201d and expressed gratitude to rescue workers. \u2013 Reuters<\/p>\n

(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A father and \u200chis son were pulled out alive from the rubble of a collapsed building, four days…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":559973,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,137634,5462,24178,687,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,33011,5,237437,6119,7,8,4450,65,66,67],"class_list":["post-559972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-caracas","tag-disaster","tag-earthquakes","tag-emergency","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-headlines","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-natural-disaster","tag-news","tag-quake","tag-rescue","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-venezuela","tag-world","tag-world-news","tag-worldnews"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116833747052521880","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=559972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/559973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}