A shocking video showed the moment a rescue team pulled the small dog from the tree nearly a week later powerful twin earthquakes it shook Venezuela, killing hundreds of people and destroying thousands of buildings.
Footage showed a search and rescue team from El Salvador pulling a dog from a collapsed building in Caraballeda, a town in the devastated region of La Guaira.
In the footage, a barking sound can be heard coming from a black hole in the debris. The video then shows the dog excitedly licking his rescuer’s face after being pulled from the collapsed building as the crowd cheers. Footage later shows a doctor feeding a starving dog with an injection.
“After 5 hours, we were able to rescue this little dog named Giselle, in Residential El Palmar, Caraballeda,” Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele wrote on social media when he shared the video. “If someone owns it, they can go to our teams in the area and prove with photos or videos that it is theirs.”
The dog was trapped under the rubble for five days.
Rescuers have been finding small miracles amid the disaster, including the rescue of an 18-day-old baby, who was pulled with her mother from the collapsed multi-storey building after they were both trapped for 32 hours. In another instance, a mother and her 9-month-old baby were pulled from the rubble of the collapsed building with “only minor injuries,” Virginia Urban Search and Rescue Task Force 1 said at the time.
Meanwhile, international rescue teams, including from the US and El Salvador, have been working around the clock to try to rescue 44-year-old security guard Hernán Gil Flores, who was trapped under a collapsed 10-story building in La Guaira for six days.
“It’s a very difficult way to rescue,” said Manny Sampang, the leader of a Los Angeles County Fire Department team that is in Venezuela to help with rescue efforts, told CBS News. “I have a lot of buildings that depend on that building that we’re trying to rescue him from.”
El Salvador’s president echoed that sentiment on social media, writing that “the aftershocks made this one of the most difficult rescues we’ve ever faced.”
“However, despite all these challenges, Hernán continues to respond, and we were able to keep him hydrated, so we are hopeful that this rescue will be successful,” Bukele wrote.
The death toll from the 7.5 and 7.2 magnitude earthquakes, which struck less than a minute after 6 p.m. on June 24, was more than 1,900 as of Tuesday. Tens of thousands are still missing, according to the United Nations.
