A Venezuelan father witnessed the rescue of his son, daughter-in-law, and grandson from the basement of a collapsed building in La Guaira, where they had been trapped with seven floors above them after the devastating earthquakes on June 24.
The account of the rescue, published on Instagram by José Alberto Gallipoli Lameda, became one of the most moving testimonies of the tragedy.
The video captures the moment when the three survivors are pulled from the rubble, greeted with relief and overwhelming emotion by family and friends.
"Yesterday morning, I went down to the basement of the collapsed building. The scene was devastating. I shouted my son Jofram's name with the last breath of faith I had left. And amidst the chaos, I heard his response. A faint whisper, hardly audible. They were alive," the father wrote.
According to his account, Jofram, his wife, and their young son were buried under the entire structure of the building, which collapsed during the two earthquakes of magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5 that shook Venezuela just 39 seconds apart.
"Seven floors collapsed onto him and his family, and there he was, responding from the basement. Jofram showed me what it means to be a man built on rock," the father added.
Gallipoli attributed survival to both the efforts of the rescue teams and her son's strength: "The rescuers did the hard work, but his will to live sustained the space. The abyss is not the end; it is the workshop where unbreakable beings are forged."
The happy ending came after the father himself published a first video—also viral—in which he was seen desperately searching for Jofram among the rubble of the building in La Guaira, where he found his son's crushed truck. This footage generated thousands of reactions on social media before the outcome of the rescue was known.
"My son, my daughter-in-law, and my grandson are back. My family is complete. The physical structure has fallen, but the true architects of life are ready to rebuild from scratch, on a more solid and real foundation," Gallipoli emphasized.
"I have no words to thank the rescuers," he concluded his message, which garnered over a million views in just a few hours.
The rescue of this family takes place within a disaster of historic proportions. The two earthquakes that shook Venezuela on June 24 are the strongest recorded in the country since 1900, according to the United States Geological Survey.
The epicenter was located in the state of Yaracuy, in the municipality of Yumare, at a depth between 10 and 13 kilometers, and the coastal area of La Guaira was the most devastated, with dozens of buildings collapsed in Catia la Mar, Macuto, and Caraballeda.
This Friday, acting president Delcy Rodríguez confirmed 589 deceased and 2,980 injured, a number that nearly quadrupled the toll from the previous day. At least 346 buildings, hospitals, and shopping centers collapsed or sustained serious damage, and more than 200 aftershocks were recorded.
The international response included rescue teams from the Dominican Republic - the first country to land in Venezuela - El Salvador, Mexico, Brazil, and the United States. The Southern Command mobilized military forces to support the efforts, a remarkable gesture given the historic antagonism between Washington and the government of Nicolás Maduro.
The U.S. Geological Survey warned that its probabilistic estimation system places the final number of casualties at a 42% probability between 10,000 and 100,000, making this disaster a humanitarian emergency of still uncertain scope.
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