Venezuela experienced catastrophic back-to-back earthquakes that claimed more than 2,200 lives and caused widespread destruction across the country. Among the devastation, rescue teams recovered a 43-year-old security guard named Hernán Alberto Gil Flores alive from the debris of a shopping centre on Thursday, eight days after the initial tremors buried him beneath tonnes of rubble.

Gil Flores's rescue demonstrates the possibility of survival in major structural collapses when victims are sheltered in certain positions within the wreckage. His extraction from the shopping centre ruins represents one of the few positive outcomes in an otherwise tragic disaster that has left the nation in a state of emergency and mourning.