Aaron Levi Cantillo Vargas, a 21-year-old Venezuelan, survived 106 hours trapped under the rubble of the OPP 25 building in Tanaguarena, La Guaira state, following the devastating double earthquake that struck northern Venezuela on June 24, 2026. His impressive testimony after being rescued recounts every hour of anguish, faith, and determination that kept him alive.
It all began in an ordinary way: Aaron was playing with an Xbox in his room when the floor started to shake. "What I did was run toward the door. On the first floor, just to get to the ground level, everything came crashing down on me," he recounted. After recovering from the impact, he checked his body for injuries and found none, while around him he could hear others complaining of pain.
In total darkness, several of those trapped passed a phone from hand to hand —Isaac, Sam, Keiner— so Aaron could try to call 911 and 171. There was no signal. Faced with collective despair and the fear that others might not survive, Aaron made a decision: "I told them, let's pray."
The rescuers took hours to locate him. When Aaron heard someone digging, he began to hit the ceiling with a metal rod and shouted to guide them. “Every time I was close to them, they would ask me: if I speak to you from here, do you hear me from far away or do you hear me up close?” he recalled. This is how he directed the rescue teams until they were able to communicate with him.
Desperation also had its moment: "I'm anxious, I'm scared, I don't want to die here, I'm tired, I can't take it anymore, I'm thirsty," he confessed to the rescuers. They responded by inserting a tube through the rebar to provide him with water and serum. "Give me water and I can hold on a bit longer," he kept repeating.
One of the most difficult obstacles was the body of a deceased person—identified as "Mari"—which blocked the way between Aaron and the rescuers. It was the young man himself who suggested the solution: "If you move the body of the person on top of Mari to the side, I can step over Mari and get out of here." The rescuers handed him a strap, Aaron tied it, and with that pull, he managed to jump over.
At the moment of the final extraction, a rescuer named Javier offered his own body as protection. "I will be your carpet, you will go over me so you don't get scraped," he said, and added: "You just, as they say, enjoy the ride."
The rescue, carried out on Monday, June 29, was made possible through the joint efforts of teams from Venezuela, Mexico, and El Salvador. The operation lasted 43 hours from the moment Aaron was found alive. The President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, one of the first leaders to send assistance, announced the news: "After intense hours of collaborative work, Aaron Levi Cantillo Vargas, 21 years old, has been rescued alive."
The double earthquake of June 24 —two tremors with magnitudes of 7.2 and 7.5 separated by just 39 seconds— is regarded as the most powerful to have impacted Venezuela in over a century and one of the most intense recorded in the country's history.
The official balance as of June 30 reported at least 1,943 dead, 10,571 injured, and 15,866 affected, while the UN estimated up to 50,000 missing nationwide. In La Guaira, the hardest-hit state, at least 189 buildings collapsed and another 666 were severely damaged.
Bukele closed his announcement with a phrase that sums up what many felt upon hearing Aaron's story: "Thank you, God, for allowing this miracle. We continue to work with the hope of saving more lives".
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