The death toll from the two earthquakes in Venezuela has risen to 920, with tens of thousands of people still missing, and the desperate and slow efforts to search for survivors have been supported by international rescue teams.
The head of UN humanitarian aid, Tom Fletcher has said that more than 50,000 people are missing after two powerful earthquakes struck within a minute of each other on the evening of June 24, collapsing buildings in the northern part of the country.
The coastal area of La Guaira, near the capital, was hardest hit, where one building after another was reduced to dust and rubble by the earthquakes, which measured 7.2 and 7.5 on the Richter scale. Family members, neighbors, and volunteers resorted to using their bare hands to try to pull out survivors, complaining about the lack of heavy equipment and official assistance to rescue those trapped alive.“I’m looking for my little Gael; he was only five months old,” said a distraught 40-year-old Marhosli Salazar, whose 16-year-old daughter died in the earthquake. Her baby and her cousin are missing.
“Please, we need support here. We need equipment to start removing the columns. We haven’t seen a single government official here not one,” she added. At one of the collapsed buildings, workers used sledgehammers to break through the rubble and called for complete silence so they could hear the cries of survivors.
“This is a very, very complex rescue operation,” said Tom Fletcher, warning that the death toll could rise significantly. Aftershocks and collapsed buildings still posed a serious danger.
Near a building in La Guaira, a rescuer wearing a helmet begged people to get out of the way, warning of a potential collapse. Oil-rich Venezuela has been hit by its worst earthquake in more than a century, after more than a decade of economic collapse devastated hospitals and public services, forcing millions to flee the country.
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