At a press conference on Thursday, Rodríguez called the earthquakes “a natural tragedy on a scale we never imagined.”

He rejected criticism that his government had reacted too slowly and said thousands of officials had been deployed after the earthquakes.

“We have done everything in our power and we will continue to do everything in our power and more,” Rodríguez told reporters.

A Chilean firefighter had previously described Gil’s rescue operation as “without a doubt the most complex and technically difficult I have ever had to face.”

Allan Madrigal, a Costa Rican Red Cross paramedic, told reporters at the scene that Gil had “come out perfect” from the ordeal.

Madrigal is the rescuer who heard Gil’s faint cries for help emerging from the rubble on Sunday.

“It was an emotional moment,” he recalled, explaining that at first he had not trusted his own ears and asked a colleague to confirm that “I wasn’t imagining it.”

From that moment on, the rescuers ran to try to get the security guard out.

Gil was on duty in a small concrete booth in the basement of the parking lot adjacent to the Galerías Playa Grande shopping center in Catia La Mar when the two earthquakes struck.

It appears that the cabin created a shell around it, protecting it from the 140 tons of debris that collapsed around and on top of it.

“He told us that he doesn’t have a single crushed nail,” said another Costa Rican Red Cross worker shortly before Gil was pulled from the rubble.

Gil had been given water and doctors had hooked him up to an intravenous drip while teams from Venezuela, Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Mexico, Portugal and the United States worked to free him.

Parts of the access shafts that rescuers built to reach him collapsed several times, highlighting the dangers the work posed to both the rescuers and Gil.

During the night, search teams were finally able to establish visual contact with the survivor.

In the images recorded by a small camera inserted in the rubble where Gil was trapped, a Chilean firefighter can be heard asking him to turn his head towards the camera.