BSFR Rescuers Free Man Trapped 8 Days in Venezuela Quake

BROWARD COUNTY, FL (BocaNewsNow.com) (Copyright © 2026 MetroDesk Media, LLC) — When a magnitude 7.1 earthquake rattled Venezuela on June 24, followed less than a minute later by a 7.5 aftershock, Broward Sheriff Fire Rescue wasted no time answering the call. Within 48 hours, six BSFR first responders were on a plane headed for the disaster zone as part of the South Florida Urban Search and Rescue Task Force, joining an international effort to dig through the wreckage left behind.

For 11 days, the BSFR crew worked shoulder to shoulder with rescue teams from around the world, sifting through collapsed buildings and listening for any sign that someone, somewhere, might still be alive underneath. On June 28, they got that sign: faint sounds coming from beneath a flattened shopping center. Crews scrambled, and eventually located Hernan Alberto Gil Flores, a security guard who had been working in his booth when the quake hit, buried 29 feet below the surface. That booth, it turned out, had shielded him from total collapse and left him a small pocket of air, just enough to keep him alive.

Getting him out was another matter entirely. BSFR responders spent more than 100 nonstop hours working the rescue, crawling through a passage only about 24 to 36 inches wide while carefully clearing debris so the whole structure wouldn’t come down on top of them. Rescuers were operating beneath four stories of collapsed building the entire time, all while keeping Gil talking and supplied with water to hold on.

The gamble paid off. On July 2, roughly 183 hours after the quake first trapped him, rescuers pulled Gil from the rubble alive and brought him to safety, greeted by cheering crowds who had gathered to watch. Gil, a father of two, had asked rescuers not to tell his wife he’d been found until they knew for certain he would make it out. He did. “You train for situations like this one for so long, and then you get to use those skills in a very complex situation,” said BSFR Captain Kevin Meyers. “It was very rewarding to bring him out alive.”