Brazilian seeks help to find father under rubble in Venezuela
Just over a week after the earthquakes that devastated Venezuela, around 38,000 people are still missing, according to an unofficial platform that compiles records.
Brazilian-Venezuelan Daniel Medina and his family are among those who share this anguish of trying to locate a loved one in the midst of a catastrophe in the country.
His father, Félix Tovar, is among those missing. He is 70 years old, Venezuelan, has had permanent residence in Brazil for almost 20 years and divided his life between the two countries.
Félix Tovar, missing after the earthquakes that hit Venezuela last Wednesday (24) - Daniel Medina
To CNN Brasil, Daniel says that his father traveled to Venezuela a few months ago after having spent around a year and a half in Brazil.
Tovar lives in Caracas, but was in La Guaira - the region most affected by the tremors - a few days ago. He planned to fly out on Friday (26) to visit Daniel's daughter and sister, Elibel, and see his grandson, who live in Chile.
"The family grew up in La Guaira. It's a place he has a very strong connection with and really likes. As it's close to the airport, he was staying in a guesthouse there," said Daniel.
Since the tremors hit Venezuela on Wednesday night (24), he and his sister have been mobilizing to obtain information on where their father was and trying to gather donations for the civilian volunteers working in the rubble in the face of the scant response from the authorities.
According to the information they obtained from an employee at the inn, Tovar had left the place to eat at La Almendrina bakery, in the Playa Grande sector, a few minutes before the earthquakes.
Daniel reports that they also managed to record a signal from his father's phone, at 7:19 pm on Wednesday, in a location that coincides with the vicinity of the bakery.
"Several rescue teams have gone there in recent days, but there is a lack of equipment [for the rescues]," he said. The lack of heavy machinery and gasoline has profoundly impacted the effectiveness of operations in the country - and further forced volunteers to dig through the rubble with their bare hands and the simple tools they can gather.
Daniel says that Spanish rescuers, who were at the site on Wednesday (1st), reported that sniffer dogs detected signs of life at the site, which raised the family's hopes.
On Thursday night (2), shortly before speaking to CNN Brasil, Daniel said that a rescuer who is part of the Brazilian humanitarian mission in Venezuela got in touch and said that the case had already been passed on to the country's search and rescue teams.
CNN Brasil contacted Itamaraty requesting more information regarding the actions of Brazilian authorities in the case.
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Source: CNN