Desperate race for survivors as Venezuela enters Day 3 after deadly twin quakes

LA GUAIRA, Venezuela — The increasingly desperate search for survivors in Venezuela entered a third day Saturday as people dug through the rubble of collapsed homes and apartment buildings after the devastating one-two punch of 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude earthquakes, knowing time is running out.

A mix of international rescue teams, Venezuelans looking for loved ones and neighbors used shovels, heavy equipment, ropes and bare hands atop mounds of toppled concrete throughout La Guaira, one of Venezuela’s hardest-hit states. Aid agencies consider the first 48 to 72 hours as crucial for retrieving people alive, though that can be extended if they have access to food and water.

The toll of Wednesday’s quakes stood at at least 1,430 dead as of Saturday. The number of missing stood at more than 51,000 missing on Friday. People reported seeing few state rescue teams in the hardest-hit areas despite authorities projecting an image of a robust government response.

There have been 432 seismic events thus far — the two earthquakes Wednesday and 430 aftershocks, Jorge Rodríguez, the President of Venezuela’s National Assembly, said Saturday on state television.

Acting President Delcy Rodríguez said on state television Saturday that more than 14,000 members of the military and police are patrolling the area, where access is now blocked and special permits are required to enter.

Over 2,000 rescue units from 21 international organizations are on the ground in Venezuela or en route, Jorge Rodríguez said Saturday.

One runway at heavily damaged Simón Bolívar International Airport, which serves Venezuela’s capital, was operational as of Saturday, according to a senior U.S. official who insisted on anonymity to brief reporters.

The U.S. has deployed 80-person search and rescue teams from Los Angeles and Fairfax County with canines and equipment that were activated within two hours of the disaster and are on the ground pulling survivors from the rubble, the official said. County and city teams from Miami are also en route, the official added.

The U.S. has also pushed out $150 million towards the disaster and is working on an additional package of nine figures, set to be announced in the next day or so, the senior U.S. official said, stressing that Venezuela that’s important to U.S. national and economic security.

Starlink has also agree to provide free emergency satellite internet during the recovery efforts.

Governments mobilizing emergency efforts

Government forces distributed food and water to survivors in La Guaira, and Rodríguez said her government was mounting a full response during these “critical hours for rescuing people alive.”

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 United States. 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 people reported tens of thousands of missing on independent digital databases. Those figures likely included people who have been incommunicado due to the lack of cellphone signals, and some reports may be duplicated.

The number of injured stood at more than 3,300 as of midday Friday, and authorities said they rescued 243.

More than 3,000 families have been affected, and more than 7,500 people are in hospitals, Jorge Rodríguez said Saturday.

Millions of people reeling

The International Organization for Migration said up to 6.76 million people could be affected, some 2 million of them in Caracas alone. The destruction was amplified by the quick succession of shallow quakes, experts said.

Loyce Pace, the International Red Cross’ regional director for the Americas, said “people are still terrified to reenter what were their homes.”

Indeed, many continued to sleep on the street.

In the city of Maiquetia, people lined up outside stores and pharmacies that served them one by one behind closed doors. At one point a woman in a crowd threw herself to the ground to protect a package of diapers with her body, desperate to keep it.

Traffic and throngs of motorcyclists at times disrupted search efforts. Mexican soldiers and volunteers repeatedly asked for silence to try to hear signs of life under the rubble, but bikers — civilian and uniformed — continued to honk horns and rev engines to the first responders’ frustration.

Some people began to carry off basic goods such as toilet paper and food from stores in Catia La Mar, adjacent to the country’s main airport. Others swarmed a civilian pickup truck that was giving out bread and water, until a soldier intervened. The parking lot of a pharmacy turned into a makeshift shelter with tarps, hammocks and tents.

A few miles (kilometers) away, Yuleidy Cadenas, 28, stood across the street from a collapsed public housing building, hoping her son, mother and brother would be pulled out alive.

She fled barefoot from another building as it collapsed Wednesday and found her mother’s 12-floor apartment tower had pancaked.

“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.