Father and son rescued after four days buried under rubble of Venezuela's earthquakes

La Guaira. A father and his son were pulled alive from the rubble of a collapsed building on Sunday, four days after devastating earthquakes struck Venezuela.

The rescue provided a glimmer of hope for French and US rescue workers racing against time to find more survivors.

The pair, both visibly weak and wearing masks, were carried on improvised fabric stretchers through debris-strewn streets to a waiting ambulance as crowds gathered around emergency vehicles in La Guaira, the coastal state hardest hit by Wednesday's earthquakes.

The disaster has left at least 1,450 people dead and thousands more missing.

Their rescue followed 12 hours of painstaking efforts by teams using specialised search cameras and carefully navigating unstable rubble to reach the trapped victims.

"They are extremely weak, as any patient trapped under rubble for four days would be. We are doing everything possible to rehydrate them and administer medication during the extraction process, which is moving very slowly," a member of the French Civil Security said.

The rescue operation involved personnel from the French Civil Security and the Fairfax County Urban Search and Rescue Team from Virginia in the United States, which on Saturday rescued a mother and her nine-month-old baby.

Before extracting the father and son, rescuers prepared intravenous drips and cleared debris, while other teams continued searching for signs of life.

At least 33 people were rescued over the weekend, but tens of thousands remain missing, raising fears that time is running out to find more survivors.

According to disaster specialists, the chances of finding survivors beneath rubble decline sharply after 72 hours following an earthquake.