Rescuers ‘pulling people out with their bare hands’ as earthquakes kill 920

Vanessa Silva
Reporting from La Guaira

Image source, AFP via Getty Images

Forty-eight hours after the powerful earthquakes that shook the Venezuelan coast, aid is beginning to arrive.

In La Guaira state, destruction is everywhere – hundreds of structures have been destroyed. Buildings have been reduced to a twisted mass of cement and beams.

Families are waiting in front of the rubble, hoping for a miracle. Natacha Díaz, a mother almost voiceless, tells the BBC that her two daughters are trapped in the small shopping centre where they worked as manicurists. She cries as she holds a photo of her daughters on her mobile phone.

A few metres away, Andreína Valerio, with little sleep, and accompanied by her brother-in-law, waits for a miracle that will bring back Santiaguito, her one-and-a-half-year-old son. “My only son,” she tells me through tears.

Two uncles and the boy’s grandparents, who cared for the baby while his mother worked in Caracas, are also trapped in this family.

The state is militarised. Police, rescuers and volunteers from other states have arrived. Although rescue teams from other countries are already in Venezuela, they are not yet in this area of Caraballeda.

Around midday, we saw the arrival of heavy machinery to remove debris… A hydraulic crane only began working around 14:15 at this point on the coast.