Survivors tell of ‘brutal and fast’ Venezuela quake as hunt for survivors goes on | Venezuela

Ligia Level’s family lived almost entirely in three apartment blocks along the waterfront Hotel Boulevard, a cluster of palm-lined resorts and high-rise apartments along Venezuela’s Caribbean coast.

These buildings and the lives within them were shattered when a powerful “double” earthquake shook the area Wednesday afternoon.

Level, 67, jumped from a first-floor window and broke his foot while trying to get to safety. Their relatives appear to have had less luck.

On Thursday, he sat outside Residencias Villamar, one of the three buildings, and wondered if there was a chance his nephews had survived by jumping from their fifth-floor apartment onto a mattress outside.

Level believed that his mother and sister, who lived next door in an apartment called Residencias Anna Mar, were almost certainly dead. “We lost them,” he cried as he stood by the rubble of buildings waiting for news and for government aid to arrive.

“Please, we absolutely need international help here. Anything and anyone we can find,” he pleaded as volunteers searched the rubble for survivors in the absence of civil protection teams. “We weren’t prepared for something like this, we’re not used to it.”

Hotel Avenue is located in La Guaira, a ruined port city surrounding Venezuela’s main international airport, which was destroyed by a devastating earthquake.

In a televised speech, Venezuela’s interim leader, Delcy Rodríguez, declared the La Guaira region the area most affected by what he called an “unprecedented seismic event” and lamented the “absolute tragedy” that had befallen its residents. “We hope to save as many lives as possible,” Rodríguez said While visiting “Ground Zero” He promised that international rescue teams would begin arriving on Thursday.

His brother, Jorge Rodríguez, president of the national assembly and acting president, said 250 buildings were destroyed, mostly in La Guaira.

As the Rodríguez brothers spoke, much of La Guaira and nearby towns such as Catia La Mar and Caraballeda became a mess of metal, concrete and dust, as social media was filled with names and faces of people not seen since the disaster.

One of the missing men was named Carlos Ravelo, an airline pilot who was last seen at Residencias Villamar. “Any information could be very important to help us find him!” he pleaded for a message in an online flyer distributed by friends.

Also missing from the same building were the Bencomo family, the Lonardys, Marysville and Paola, who were said to run a local nursery in an online appeal for help.

Other posts suggested even larger families disappeared during the disaster: Entire families of four, five or even six people were feared lost as a result of Venezuela’s worst earthquake since October 1900.

Relatives of the missing flocked to medical centers in the capital Caracas, hoping to be taken there.

Outside the public Domingo Luciani hospital, David Guevara scanned handwritten patient lists for the names of his aunts, Andrea Laya and Gabriela Fleritt.

They lived in Residencias Las Palmas, another apartment block in La Guaira, but had not been heard from since the earthquake. Guevara, who underwent surgery due to injuries to his arms and legs after his seven-year-old nephew Sebastián was found alive, said, “We talked to the neighbors, but they can’t find those two.”

Lists of “earthquake patients” revealed the intergenerational impact of the disaster, which injured thousands and killed at least 920 people across the country. Among the records of patients taken for surgery were two four-year-old children named Ana and Axiel, a six-year-old boy named José, and seven-year-old Jesús. Meanwhile, the trauma center had accepted 73-year-old María, 19-year-old Antony and 55-year-old Carmen.

La Guaira had experienced tragedy before; The most famous was in 1999, when landslides killed more than 15,000 people at the beginning of former president Hugo Chavez’s 14-year presidency. But even by those standards, the scenes described by survivors of this week’s disaster were chilling.

The disaster was this: caught on camera By a pair of fishermen who were at sea while their city was falling apart. “Oh my God!” One of them can be heard gasping for breath as huge clouds of dust cover the coastal areas of La Guaira, where their family lives.

Héctor Morán Cirkovic was standing next to the swimming pool of the Playa Grande Yacht Club, just a few hundred meters north of Residencias Anna Mar, when 40 seconds of intense tremors leveled building after building.

“It was brutal and it was so fast. There wasn’t even five seconds to leave. Everyone [around us] He was screaming and in shock, he thought life was over. “There was a lot of fear, panic and hysteria,” said Cirkovic, a 61-year-old retired architect.

Cirkovic recalled watching five buildings collapse “vertically before my eyes.” In total, it saw about 30 nearby buildings destroyed.

Speaking on state television VTV, engineer Francisco Garcés compared the power of earthquakes to the energy released by an atomic bomb. “We have just witnessed an extraordinary seismic event; extraordinary for the country, but also extraordinary for the planet,” Garcés said, noting that this week’s earthquake released 32 times more energy than the 6.5 magnitude earthquake that devastated the same region in 1967.

Garcés warns of aftershocks The Caribbean and South American tectonic plates responsible for the disaster continued to move, and once rescue efforts were finished, engineers should investigate why La Guaira suffered such extensive damage, he said.

For now, nearly 48 hours after the disaster, the focus remains on finding survivors even as hopes begin to fade.

“A lot of people died,” said Diego González, who took his cousin to Domingo Luciani hospital for treatment after spending four hours pulling him out of his collapsed home in Catia La Mar, a coastal town west of La Guaira. “Catia La Mar has been demolished. Very few buildings will remain standing,” he added.

Rotny Bombart, a 33-year-old paramedic, had come to the same hospital to treat an arm wound he received while pulling his mother, María Eugenia, out of a collapsed 15-storey apartment building in La Guaira for five hours. Bombat eventually found him after hearing his cry for help.

“Nothing can prepare you for this,” he said, recalling that he saw dismembered corpses, dead people and children in the disaster area; but there was little sign of government aid.