Black smoke from fires in flattened buildings and the smell of decomposing bodies spread across ruins Thursday, eight days after Venezuela's devastating earthquakes, while rescue teams pulled on a thread of hope that they might still find survivors trapped beneath the rubble. As officials carried body bags and stacked caskets in the port city of Catia La Mar, joy briefly broke through the pervading misery that has blanketed Venezuela's northern La Guaira on Thursday morning when rescue teams pulled a 43-year-old man out of the rubble he was buried under for nearly eight days. Rescuers from across the Americas had worked for about 100 hours to pull Hernan Alberto Gil Flores from the collapsed shopping mall under which he was buried.