A father and his son have been pulled out alive from the rubble of a collapsed building, four days after the devastating earthquakes that struck Venezuela.
It was a scene that gave hope to the rescue workers active in the area as they raced against the clock to find more survivors.
Rescue workers carried the pair, visibly weakened and both wearing masks, on improvised fabric stretchers through debris-strewn streets to a waiting ambulance, as a crowd gathered around the emergency vehicles in La Guaira.
The coastal state was hardest hit by the earthquakes on Wednesday that left at least 1,450 dead and thousands missing.
Their rescue came after 12 hours of painstaking efforts by American and French teams that combed through the ruins using specialised search cameras, carefully working through unstable rubble to reach the trapped victims.
"They are extremely weak, as any patient trapped under rubble for four days would be, so we are doing everything possible to rehydrate them and administer various medications during the extraction process, which is moving very slowly," said a member of the French Civil Security.
Race against time
The rescue team in that area includes members of the French Civil Security and American responders from the Fairfax County Urban Search and Rescue Team in Virginia, who the previous day rescued a mother and her 9-month-old baby.
Before extracting the family members, rescuers prepared intravenous drips and cleared debris. Others remained beside the rubble, searching for signs of life and communicating with their colleagues amid the ruins.
At least 33 people were rescued over the weekend, though tens of thousands remain missing, heightening fears that time is running out to find survivors.
According to specialists, after 72 hours following an earthquake, the odds of finding victims alive beneath the rubble drop dramatically.
