Five days. No food. No water. Buried beneath the rubble of a collapsed building. And the moment she finally felt sunlight again, she had just one thing on her mind: saying thank you.
When twin earthquakes of 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude struck Venezuela just 39 seconds apart on June 24, they left entire neighborhoods flattened across La Guaira state.
More than 1,900 people lost their lives. Tens of thousands more were displaced, injured, or still missing as rescue teams from around the world raced against time.
On Monday, five days after the earthquakes hit, a search and rescue team from El Salvador was working through the ruins of Residencial El Palmar in Caraballeda when they heard something.
After five hours of careful digging, they pulled her out.
A dog named Giselle.
The footage captured what happened next, and it is impossible to watch without feeling something shift in your chest. The moment Giselle was freed from the rubble, she did not cry.
She did not freeze. She turned to the rescuer holding her and began licking his face, her tail wagging with everything she had left.
She was given water and checked for injuries.
El Salvador President Nayib Bukele shared the video alongside a message: “After 5 hours, we managed to rescue this little dog who responds to the name Giselle. If anyone is her owner, they can approach our teams in the area and prove with photos or videos that she is theirs.”
As of Tuesday, rescue operations in Venezuela involved some 30,000 Venezuelan emergency workers and 2,700 foreign experts from around the world, working around the clock as hope for finding additional survivors grew thinner with every passing hour.
In the middle of all of that grief and exhaustion, a small dog covered in dust chose to respond to her rescue with kisses.
Sometimes the most powerful thing in a disaster zone is the one that reminds everyone why they are still digging.
Source: nypost – “Miracle puppy rescued from Venezuela rubble after 5 days as race to find survivors intensifies”