Death toll rises, race to find survivors as foreign aid arrives
Regina Garcia Cano, Juan Pablo Arraez And Megan Janetsky
La Guaira: Tensions rose further on Saturday as desperation grew among suffering residents of Venezuela’s La Guaira province, where rescuers and civilians searched for earthquake survivors as the death toll soared.
The number of people killed rose to 1,430 on Saturday local time (Sunday AEST), the Venezuelan government said, and families reported at least 68,900 people were missing three days after a pair of earthquakes of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 devastated the South American nation.
Searching for loved ones and neighbors, Venezuelans used shovels, heavy equipment, ropes and bare hands over toppled concrete piles in La Guaira, one of the country’s worst-hit provinces.
Most of those digging were civilians who took the search into their own hands, and tensions came to a head due to the inadequate response of the Venezuelan government, whose soldiers, firefighters, police and cadets were clearly ill-prepared to respond to the tragedy.
Disappointment was compounded by the state’s efforts to project an image of a strong state response.
Mileidy Romero, who was among those searching the rubble of the coastal town of Caraballeada, said: “There are a pile of bodies there from last night. Newborn babies. Look what time it is and they still haven’t come to pick them up. At 8 p.m. there were live people down there and they didn’t even bother to save them. We found a few bodies and they didn’t help us save them either.” “What are they waiting for?”
Aid agencies believe the first 48 to 72 hours are crucial for people to be rescued alive, but this can be extended if people have access to food and water.
But about 72 hours after the earthquake, a growing number of international rescue teams joined life-saving efforts.
More than 14,000 soldiers and police patrol the area, where access is now blocked, and special permits are required for entry, Acting President Delcy Rodríguez said on state television on Saturday. More rescue teams sent by governments around the world arrived in Venezuela on Saturday.
Simón Bolívar International Airport, which serves Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, was severely damaged in the earthquake. A runway became operational on Saturday as U.S. teams worked to repair the critical pass, Jeremy Lewin, a senior State Department official in charge of foreign aid, told reporters.
Search teams and foreign aid from Mexico, the United States, Brazil, El Salvador, France, El Salvador and more countries continued to arrive in Venezuela Saturday morning to support rescue efforts.
Lewin, the State Department official, said the U.S. military would help coordinate flights to bring search and rescue workers, mobile hospitals and supplies. He said two 80-person search teams were at work and a U.S. Navy transport ship had docked off the coast of Venezuela, ready to pick up airlifted survivors in need of medical attention. Finding people injured in the earthquake was a “race against time”, Lewin said.
“People are trapped under rubble and the priority is to get search and rescue teams, healthcare professionals and others to them as quickly as possible to save lives,” he said.
In the city of Maiquetia, people lined up in front of shops and pharmacies that served them behind closed doors. At one point, a woman in the crowd threw herself to the ground, desperately shielding a pack of diapers with her body.
Traffic and the density of motorcyclists occasionally disrupted the search efforts. Mexican soldiers and volunteers repeatedly asked for silence to hear signs of life under the rubble, but civilians and uniformed cyclists continued to honk their horns and rev their engines to the frustration of first responders.
Some people began carrying essentials such as toilet paper and food from stores in Catia La Mar, adjacent to the country’s main airport. Others surrounded a civilian pickup truck delivering bread and water until a soldier intervened. A pharmacy parking lot turned into a makeshift shelter with awnings, hammocks and tents.
A few kilometers away, 28-year-old Yuleidy Cadenas stood across from a collapsed public housing building, hoping that her son, mother and brother would be rescued alive.
She ran barefoot from another building when it collapsed on Wednesday (Thursday AEST) and saw her mother’s 12-storey apartment tower flattened.
“I climbed on top of the debris and told them to scream, but neither my brother, nor my son, nor my mother did so,” Cadenas said.
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