Venezuela earthquakes: Two boys pulled from the rubble 85 hours after disasters

Two boys are pulled from the rubble of collapsed buildings in quake-hit Venezuela – a glimmer of hope among the devastation that has left 1,430 dead.

Astonishing footage shows the 11-year-olds emerge from the twisted debris of their homes, hours apart. Relieved rescuers erupt in applause as one boy, named Moises, shields his eyes from the sun, four days after the South American country was rocked by a series of powerful quakes.

Hours later, interim President Delcy Rodríquez announced another 11-year-old boy had been rescued. Video posted on social media showed him being carried down a huge mound of wreckage on a stretcher. It purportedly showed the miraculous rescue in the town of Caraballeda. Rodríquez wrote: “In these hours, every life is hope for Venezuela.”

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It comes after officials confirmed at least 1,430 people had been killed in the back-to-back 7.2 and 7.5-magnitude quakes which hit Wednesday, with at least 68,900 people reported as missing. Towns and villages were reduced to rubble by the strongest shocks since 1900.

The first quake, measured at 7.2 magnitude, struck at 6.04pm local time (11.04pm UK) on Wednesday. That triggered a second reaching 7.5 magnitude 38 seconds later.

The epicentres were 85 miles west of the capital Caracas, but the sheer power of the two shocks caused extensive damage and casualties in the city. Now, 85 hours after the first quake, rescuers are refusing to give up hope. Desperate families have been digging through the debris by hand, trying to find their loved ones.

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According to the BBC, some say they can hear people under the rubble, but cannot move the heavy slabs of concrete, and are waiting anxiously for heavy machinery to arrive. Columbia’s National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD) said Moises was buried under about 3m (9.8ft) of debris, and the rescue team spent six hours conducting “high-precision work” on Saturday to reach him.

Reports also emerged today that a rescuer was overheard on a walkie-talkie saying the young boy was found near his sister and mother, who had both died. Officials said the coastal region of La Guaira, where Caraballeda is located, has been hit the hardest.

Rescuers’ efforts have been hampered by aftershocks, which are in turn terrifying residents. “To be honest, it makes you feel kind of nervous. Any little noise… horrible,” Jesús Andueza, a 64-year-old bus driver, told BBC Mundo. Thousands of people are living in their cars or camping at places like the airport and golf course, away from buildings that could collapse.

Despite the carnage, a team of British crisis-response volunteers had bee been stuck in Madrid airport for more than 24 hours. Serve On, a UK-based charity, has a team of 11 people and one dog trying to get to Venezuela’s capital, Caracas.

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The team possesses seismic and acoustic equipment that can sense movement of deeply buried victims, and their team leader, Vernon Young, said they are desperate to get out to Venezuela “as soon as possible”.

However, Simon Bolivar International Airport, the only international airport that serves Caracas, was also ravaged by the earthquakes, so travel into the country is “severely affected”.

Mr Young, 57, who has responded to disasters in the British Virgin Islands, Turkey and Syria during 14 years volunteering for Serve On, said: “These things are always time critical. We’re a light team and can move quickly. The sooner you get there, the more chance you have of saving lives.

“Every situation is different, in Turkey they were pulling live victims out 14 days after the earthquake. We hope we can get out there and make a difference. We’re a technical rescue team and can potentially find deeply entombed victims just by their movement.

“We still believe we will make a decent contribution if we get there in the next day or two. The British Government Fire Service Team are en route now, they’re a heavy team with 68 people and we’ve got links with them. But we don’t hear much (from Venezuela), we don’t know how they’re doing.”

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Given there are no direct flights from the UK to Venezuela, the team has been at Madrid Airport since 9pm on Friday, after connecting flights from Istanbul were cancelled. Flights from Madrid have also been cancelled, leaving the volunteers stranded due to their reliance on civilian transport.

The UN’s Tom Fletcher said on Saturday that 39 search and rescue teams had been deployed from all over the world, with each consisting of 50 to 100 people. “You’re looking at almost 2,000 people surging in, 111 dogs, medical teams as well. We go in with these micro drones, they call them cockroach drones, that help us find people in the buildings.”