Juan Pablo Arraez, Regina Garcia Cano and Megan Janetsky
Updated ,first published
La Guaira: Venezuelans took the search for missing loved ones into their own hands in the aftermath of back-to-back earthquakes, citing the scarcity of government rescuers, as the human toll of the disaster climbed to at least 920 dead and more than 51,000 missing.
Citizens digging through the rubble of their homes said they have seen few state rescue teams in the areas hit hardest by the devastating 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude quakes that struck late on Wednesday, despite authorities projecting an image of a robust government response.
The lack of help compounded families’ desperation as the pressure to find buried survivors increased with each passing hour. The South American nation on Friday marked nearly two days since the disaster. Aid agencies consider the first 48 to 72 hours to be a crucial time frame to retrieve people alive, though that period increases if they have access to food and water.
Even as they searched, new earthquake struck off the northern coast of Venezuela on Friday afternoon. Reuters witnesses in Caracas and Maracay felt the quake, which earthquake monitor EMSC said had a 4.9 magnitude.
A broad international aid effort is accelerating, with more than two dozen rescue teams from around the globe arriving in Venezuela or due to arrive there soon.
“Each person saved is a miracle,” said Jorge Rodríguez, the president of the country’s National Assembly. “We are not going to hide absolutely anything about the magnitude of this tragedy.”
Desperate families across northern Venezuela searched in the ruins of buildings for family members and whatever remained of their lives.
Nazareth Jimenez sobbed into the shoulder of a loved one as she watched neighbours try to cut through slabs of concrete with hammers and power tools in a building reduced to a mountain of debris. “My god, how are we going to get them out of there?” she said.
She was in the northern state of La Guaira, just north of the capital of Caracas, where some of the worst destruction unfolded. Jimenez was wracked with anxiety as she waited to see if her siblings, nephews, nieces and friends would emerge from the debris alive.
“We’re making a call for help to governments of countries across the world,” she said, pleading for machines that would be capable of moving collapsed structures. “There are still people alive in there.”
Government forces distributed food and water to survivors in La Guaira as acting President Delcy Rodríguez said authorities were mounting a full response. She welcomed the arrival of rescuers and humanitarian aid from all over the world. Rodríguez said La Guaira had been militarised, and that more help was on the way, even as residents said it was just a fraction of the aid they needed.
The disaster poses a huge challenge for Rodríguez, the former vice president who took office in January after the capture and removal of then-President Nicolás Maduro by the US. Venezuela has been facing economic disarray for more than a decade and many people reject the legitimacy of the political movement Rodríguez represents.
The number of dead was expected to climb, and civilians reported tens of thousands of people missing on independent digital databases. The number of missing likely includes those who have been incommunicado due to the lack of cellphone signals in disaster zones. Some reports may be duplicates created when multiple loved ones are searching for the same person.
The number of injured climbed to more than 3300 as of midday Friday, and authorities said they had rescued 243 people.
The International Organisation for Migration said that up to 6.76 million people in Venezuela could be affected by the quakes, some 2 million of them in Caracas alone. Loyce Pace, the International Red Cross’ regional director for the Americas, said “people are still terrified to re-enter what were their homes.”
Desperation started to sink in on Friday as many families still had not found missing loved ones, continued to sleep on the street or grieved relatives killed in the disaster.
“I’ve been left alone in this life,” said Omar Reyes, who walked through the rubble where two of his children were buried. He said about 20 family members died in the disaster.
In Catia La Mar, a community adjacent to the country’s main airport, throngs of people began to loot basic goods such as toilet paper and food from stores. Others swarmed a civilian pickup truck that was giving out loaves of bread and water. A soldier intervened to allow the vehicle to leave. People turned the parking lot of a pharmacy into makeshift shelter by setting up tarps, hammocks and tents.
A few kilometres away, Yuleidy Cadenas stood across the street from a collapsed public housing building watching fellow Venezuelans and recently arrived foreign and local emergency crews work on the rubble. She hoped her son, mother and brother would be pulled out alive.
She fled, barefoot, from a collapsing nearby building on Wednesday and found her mother’s 12th-floor apartment tower had pancaked. Cadenas, 28, sobbed as she recalled that Friday was her son’s 12th birthday.
“I got on top of the rubble and told them to yell back, and nobody did, not my brother, nor my son or my mother,” Cadenas said. “I’m just here waiting for them.”
A few minutes later, a body was pulled from the rubble. It was not her mother’s.
Venezuela authorities said on Friday that 861 international volunteers from Mexico, the US, El Salvador, Switzerland, Colombia and beyond were working in Venezuela. Many more from other countries were expected in the coming hours and days. The UN said 1000 emergency responders in 25 search-and-rescue teams from across the globe were on their way.
On the country’s main highway, caravans of state forces, emergency personnel, dump trucks and heavy machinery moved in the direction of the tragedy. A civilian pickup truck carrying thin mattresses had its windows marked with “Help from Trujillo.”
Media reports have shared notable moments of hope, including a young man brought out on a stretcher in the San Bernardino district of Caracas to the applause of onlookers as his tearful mother said, “Leandro, I love you”.
Venezuelan TV broadcast video of a girl covered in dust and wrapped in a sweatshirt as she emerged from rubble with the help of rescuers. Caracas metropolitan rescue team head José Luis Núñez said she was found in a 10-storey building in La Guaira that collapsed and flattened “like a pancake.”
“We want to highlight this girl’s strength, determination and will to live,” Núñez said.
The US Geological Survey said both earthquakes were centred near Moron on the Caribbean coast, about 170 kilometres west of Caracas. The one-two punch of the quakes, combined with the shallow seismic movements, amplified the destruction, said Marcos Ferreira, a geophysicist and researcher at the Geological Survey of Brazil.
AP
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