Security guard Hernan Gil is buried under seven collapsed floors of Catia La Mar, inside the cubicle where he was working when the first earthquake struck Venezuela last Wednesday.
"It's a very complex rescue. Several buildings are leaning against the house that we're trying to get him out of," said the visiting American rescue leader, Manny Sampang, to CBS News.
Waiting in the rubble outside is his wife, Gusbimar Gonzalez, who says that rescue workers have managed to provide her husband with water. Centimetre by centimetre, they are getting closer to the 43-year-old.
It's a miracle, his wife tells AFP, referring to the fact that he is alive - and that so many people are helping in the fight to save him.
Two-year-old rescued
On Tuesday – six days after the quake – a two-year-old boy was rescued in La Guaira. When he arrived at the hospital, he was in a state of shock – “just screaming and screaming,” his aunt Andreína Sarmiento told the BBC. Now she is hoping for another miracle: that her sister and her husband will be found alive.
"I pray to God to give me strength. He is only two years old and I am not a mother," says the 23-year-old.
Nearly 2,300 people were confirmed dead in the quake, which was the strongest to hit Venezuela in more than a century, as of Wednesday evening. Tens of thousands are still missing.
Marked with "D" for dead
The window for finding survivors is getting smaller. Over the past six days, the approximately 3,000 international rescue workers who have arrived have only managed to save twelve people alive, the UN's disaster coordination team, UNDAC, said, according to the Spanish news agency EFE.
In hard-hit La Guaira north of Caracas, a majority of the demolished buildings are now marked with the letter D, AFP reports. D for deceased, meaning that the houses have been searched without rescue workers finding any signs of life.
On Wednesday, the Dutch team announced that it is ending its mission in Venezuela, as the chances of finding survivors have decreased.
