‘I can only describe it as a war zone’: the rescuers navigating Venezuela’s post-quake hellscape | Venezuela

When a double earthquake shook Venezuela’s northern coast last week, Israel Rivas was at home hundreds of kilometers away in the industrial city of San Félix. As the extent of the disaster became clear, the 24-year-old realized he had to react. Rivas, a mechanic and beginning photographer, pooled his savings to buy a new camera lens and hopped on a bus for the 12-hour journey to the hardest-hit coastal state of La Guaira.

“I couldn’t eat well. I couldn’t sleep well because I knew my brothers and sisters from this country were dead, so I came here and I’m doing the best I can,” she said Wednesday, exactly a week after the disaster, as she stood in front of Residencia La Gabarra, a 12-story seaside apartment complex that has become a jumble of reinforced concrete and bricks with at least three children inside.

Wandering the devastated streets of Caraballeda, a resort town east of the capital of La Guaira, Rivas came across a group of British search and rescue workers who had flown in from Merseyside, the West Midlands and Wales. “I’m here if you need me,” he remembers telling them. They told him they did this.

Since then, Rivas, who speaks fluent English, has been working as a translator for the United Kingdom’s International Search and Rescue team (UK ISAR), with team members navigating a hellscape of dilapidated properties to try to find life beneath the rubble.

While his British colleagues and Ecuadorian researchers were investigating possible signs of life detected under the rubble of La Gabarra, Rivas said, “It is a difficult job. It is difficult to see so many dead people around you. It is difficult to say that we cannot remove the body because it is 10 floors down and we have no equipment. It is difficult.”

“But one side of the coin is death. The other side of the coin is life. The coin always turns, and so do we. [hoping they land] about life.”

Rivas is one of thousands of Venezuelan volunteers who mobilized after two giant earthquakes brought death and destruction to La Guaira in 39 seconds, creating a massive humanitarian crisis and making the country’s already uncertain political future even more unpredictable.

The official death toll so far is 2,595, but there are 400 bodies reportedly This number, delivered to La Guaira’s morgue every day, is sure to increase. At least 12,400 people were injured; One estimate based on satellite data suggests more than 58,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed.

“We see buildings of more than 20 floors along the coastline. [that have] collapsed – the pancake collapses, collapses completely, layer by layer. Buildings are leaning,” said Russ Gauden, national coordinator and team leader for UK ISAR in Venezuela. [such] An apocalyptic scene that you will think you are watching… a disaster movie.”

One of Gauden’s teams was deployed a few hundred meters off Los Corales beach in Caraballeda to use life-sniffing dogs and seismic and acoustic listening equipment to confirm whether anyone was still alive under the rubble.

They gathered around the building’s rubble-strewn swimming pool early Wednesday, seeking shade under dusty umbrellas from the harsh Caribbean sun. “It’s pretty extreme. I can only describe it as a war zone in terms of collapse,” says Tristan Bowen, a firefighter from south Wales, as his crew plans their next move.

Bowen said the 72-hour “golden window” to find survivors had closed but he believed it was still possible to find people alive. Hours later, a 43-year-old security guard was pulled from the collapsed basement of a nearby shopping mall after being trapped under the rubble for eight days. “People survived many days beyond this [golden] “It all depends on where they are in this structure,” Bowen said.

Rivas was also optimistic. “It doesn’t smell bad, which means there aren’t any bodies in there, [which means there is] “They have a better chance of survival as British and Ecuadorian searchers enter the cramped tunnels they have dug into the ruins and use a loudspeaker to communicate with anyone who might be captured below,” he said.

A hundred meters away, among the ruins of a nearby high-rise, distraught relatives of one of those thought to be trapped inside await news of eight-year-old Ronald. The boy’s name is a double homage to Portuguese football player Cristiano Ronaldo and Venezuelan baseball star Ronald Acuña.

“Ronald is a very smart, calm and respectful boy,” said his grandmother, Olivia Sandoval, 50, describing his vigil outside what remains of La Gabarra. While her granddaughter was playing with her two cousins, 10-year-old Victoria and eight-year-old Leonardo, the ground shook and the building collapsed.

Since the earthquakes, Sandoval has been kneeling by the pool or among the rubble, begging for divine help. “I can’t understand how something this terrible could happen to these kids,” he said as the search continued.

Sandoval and many other Venezuelans struggle to understand something else: how the Venezuelan government failed to help them in the hours and days after the earthquakes.

Sandoval saw rescue teams from Brazil, Chile, El Salvador and Peru at the forefront of the emergency response; Not to mention the scores of Venezuelan volunteers like Rivas who flocked to La Guaira, carrying shovels, axes, water and food. But the government has been largely lacking in implementation. “This is the saddest thing,” Sandoval said, as minutes passed with no news from his grandchild.

Outside the rubble of the neighboring tower Residencia Costa Brava, which had become a chaos of walls, mattresses and pipes, there was anger at the official response. Government critics and experts blame the slow response on years of corruption, economic mismanagement and investments in political repression and internal security rather than emergency services and health care. Crippling US sanctions have further weakened the Venezuelan state.

Adolfo Guedes is shaking uncontrollably with anger as he ponders what he would say if acting president Delcy Rodríguez visited the cottage he currently occupies next to the property in La Guaira where his 23-year-old daughter Alexandra is buried.

The 56-year-old says of Rodríguez’s Chavista movement, which has been in power since Hugo Chávez came to power in 1999: “What do I say? I curse the day this wretched revolution entered Venezuela. That’s what ruined us.” Maduro was kidnapped in January on the orders of Donald Trump, and former vice president Rodríguez filled his place with the support of the US president.

“Look how we sleep! Look how we live! Look at us!” Sitting on a donated mattress supported by cinder blocks scavenged from her daughter’s dilapidated home, Guedes cried. His wife, Yaritza, lying in the bed next to him, is hugging a pillow and crying.

Outside a third ruined building, where Mexican and British rescue workers are searching for a survivor buried in a stairwell, Jesus David de Oliveira laments the government’s lack of action.

Oliveira, a 27-year-old civil engineer, complains that in the days after the earthquakes, Venezuelan soldiers took to the streets with machine guns when they should have been carrying shovels. “As you can see, international assistance is really the only help we have,” he added, as members of the Miami-Dade Fire and Rescue Department arrived on the scene. “We are alone.”

At a press conference, Rodríguez is angry to allegations that the administration was slow to react and dismissed these as biased and offensive “generalizations”. He promised to work tirelessly, He defended the armed forces by saying “morning, noon, night for Venezuela” and noted that an army commander worked in a camp for displaced people despite losing his entire family.

“We have done everything we can and we will continue to do everything in our power,” Rodríguez told reporters, claiming he responded quickly by showing WhatsApp messages on his phone. “They’re carrying globes. They’re pushing wheelbarrows,” he said of his troops.

Back in La Gabarra, as night fell, the British rescue team was replaced by a group of Brazilian firefighters, who sent Megan, a border collie, into a breach they had carved in the building’s façade with heavy tools. Ecuadorian searchers are confident that listening devices indicate a survivor is trapped inside.

“They detected movement. They detected the sound of breathing; it could be a child, a younger person, or a completely sheltered person. That’s enough to give us hope,” said Capt. Diego Assunção, a firefighter from São Paulo.

Nearby, Olivia Sandoval sits alone in the shadows, holding on to faith that her grandson and two cousins ​​will soon be found after seven painful days. “Children! These are children!” he said excitedly after a burst of activity around the pool, deceptively raising his hopes.

But another hour goes by, and then another, and still there is no sign of progress as rescuers try to cut through the steel rods that once held the building together.

As daylight dawns there is still no good news, but rescue teams and Venezuelan volunteers are working along this devastated coastline.

On the collapsed side wall of the Residencia Don Peppino to the left of La Gabarra, someone scrawled a message to the largely absent authorities. “Where there is no government, the people are abundant,” he declared.

The rubble beneath the graffiti is filled with residents’ belongings that were blown onto the streets by the earthquake. A blue toy car. A pink crib and baby photo album. A children’s bag decorated with the faces of Elsa, Anna and Olaf from the Disney movie Frozen. And a family card game called Fibber that the building’s former residents once played.

Additional reporting by Clavel Rangel