The relieved dog is seen licking its rescuer’s face after being trapped underneath rubble for five days following the devastating 7.5-magnitude Venezuela earthquakes
Incredible new footage from the Venezuela earthquake shows the moment a desperate dog was rescued after being trapped under rubble for five days.
The stranded pet was pulled from underneath a collapsed building in Caraballeda, a city in the worst-hit region of La Guaira, by a search and rescue team from El Salvador after they heard barking coming from the wreckage.
At the beginning of the clip, the dog can be heard yelping as workers in hard hats and hi-vis jacket scramble over twisted metal and broken concrete to reach inside a large gap.
One of the rescuers then ventures down, pulling the dog to safety – and it instantly begins licking his face, sparking applause from a relieved crowd. A vet is then seen feeding the hungry pup using a pipette.
Owner Gabriela Alves, who had spent days on end searching for her lost dog, told reporters: “I thought he wasn’t going to survive and everything was crushed, everything, everything. So it’s a miracle. It’s a miracle that he is alive”.
It comes as tales of remarkable survival against the odds continue to emerge from the devastated country – despite it being over a week since the deadly twin earthquakes.
Yesterday, rescue workers in another part of La Guaira pulled a 43-year-old security guard alive from a collapsed basement, ending a gruelling 100-hour operation to extract him.
Hernán Alberto Gil Flores emerged to safety covered in dust on a stretcher after being trapped since June 24 under rubble in the basement of the Galerías Playa Grande shopping centre.
Rescuers first made contact with Gil Flores over the weekend and spent the majority of this week working to free him, navigating a highly unstable structure, torrential rain and persistent aftershocks to dig a tunnel towards him.
It comes after Venezuela’s Acting President Delcy Rodríguez – who was installed after Donald Trump’s capture of Nicolás Maduro in January – hit back at criticism over her government’s response to the disaster.
Survivors have claimed there was no sign of the life-saving rescue equipment promised by the state in the crucial 72-hour rescue window after the earthquakes struck – with some saying they were forced to search through the rubble for loved ones themselves by hand until international aid arrived.
At a press conference for foreign journalists in the capital of Caracas late Thursday, Rodríguez said: “We did not wait one day, two days or three days. We activated immediately.
“To politicise a humanitarian tragedy like this – when the Venezuelan government and its authorities have spared no effort, public, private, national, or international – is disgraceful.”
At least 2,295 people are estimated to have lost their lives as a result of the earthquakes, with the death toll expected to rise further as more wreckage is searched.
