Colombian rescuers free boy from rubble after Venezuela earthquake
Rescuers pulled 11-year-old Moisés alive from rubble in La Guaira after six hours underground and more than 74 hours trapped.
Colombian rescuers pulled 11-year-old Moisés alive from nearly 10 feet of rubble in La Guaira after a six-hour extraction that ended more than 74 hours underground. Video of the rescue showed him being lifted onto a stretcher, covered with a thermal blanket and carried to an ambulance.
The boy was freed on Saturday, June 27, 2026, by Colombia’s USAR COL-1 team in Maiquetía, in Venezuela’s La Guaira state. The operation came after powerful earthquakes struck Venezuela on Wednesday, June 24, collapsing buildings and leaving search crews racing through damaged coastal neighborhoods for anyone still alive.
Moisés’ survival stood out because rescue conditions remained harsh and uncertain. Crews worked through debris packed high above the child, and the extraction lasted six hours before they could get him clear of the wreckage. The footage turned the scene into a rare burst of hope in a disaster that was still unfolding around it.
The earthquakes had already pushed the death toll above 1,400 as emergency teams continued searching across Venezuela’s battered shoreline. That toll, along with the scale of the destruction, underscored how much depended on fast access, specialized equipment and crews trained to work inside unstable collapse zones.
Colombia’s National Unit for Disaster Risk Management deployed the USAR COL-1 team into the response, adding cross-border support to a disaster centered on Venezuela’s coastal state of La Guaira. Another 11-year-old boy was also rescued separately the same day in the broader emergency, showing that the search effort was still finding survivors even as the number of dead kept rising.
For a region facing shattered structures, blocked access and hours-long extractions, Moisés’ rescue was both a narrow save and a measure of what remains at stake. The boy came out alive only after nearly three days under the rubble, and the operation exposed how much of the response still depended on reaching victims before the next collapse or delay made that impossible.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
