Earthquakes in Venezuela: teams race against time to find survivors on the 5th day of searches

Rescue efforts intensified on the fourth day after the earthquakes that devastated the state of La Guaira.
Maxwell Briceno/REUTERS via DW
Local and international rescue teams raced against time this Monday (29) to extract survivors from the rubble in Venezuela, on the fifth day after double earthquakes caused at least 1,450 deaths. According to a UN estimate, there are still around 50,000 people missing in the country.
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Even with the decreasing chances of finding survivors every hour, rescue teams still manage to find people alive in mountains of rubble, offering distressed families a brief breath of hope. Rescuers saved 33 survivors on Sunday, the government said. The first 48 to 72 hours after a natural disaster are crucial for rescue efforts.
The operations are complex and require manual labor and have been made difficult by the heat, according to reports from rescuers. Those closely following the rescue efforts say the smell of decomposing bodies is increasingly intense.
Still, there is hope for more survivors, although experts say the first 72 hours after natural disasters define the narrow window for rescuing survivors. After that, searches generally focus on recovering bodies.
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In La Guaira, a state neighboring the capital Caracas and the hardest hit area, international rescue missions arrived en masse on Sunday. In previous days, residents had expressed frustration and outrage at the inefficiency of the country's responses to the disaster, which ended up being led by civilians.
Interim President Delcy Rodríguez called for the continuation of operations and announced plans to assist people who lost their homes due to the numerous collapses. More than 770 buildings partially or completely collapsed, including residential and commercial buildings and dozens of hospitals.
The impact of the 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude earthquakes that hit the country on Wednesday affected up to 6.8 million of Venezuela's almost 30 million inhabitants, assesses the UN. The risk of further damage remains as aftershocks continue to hit the country. Earthquakes of magnitude 4.2 and 4.5 struck on Sunday morning.
Rescue of father and son excites
On Sunday in La Guaira, a crowd gathered around a mountain of rubble as they watched rescue teams from the United States, France and Venezuela pull a man and his son from a crack in the concrete, covered in dust and barely reacting.
They were placed on a black tarp and guided carefully through the crowd to an ambulance for receive intravenous hydration. The moment was marked by relief and applause, and soon after, the teams continued their work.
In another part of the state, Helen Guedez and her mother were in shock. According to the AP news agency, they had spent days trying to save their father, Jesús, from the apartment where they were staying.
American rescue teams inspected the building and confirmed that the man was still alive under the rubble. But they told the family that the structure was too unstable to enter and rescue him.
They left the scene, but Guedez said he would continue trying to rescue his father without their help. According to her, they were now working with civilian volunteers and local miners to remove it. "We are not going to give up," he told the AP. "The rest of the team is willing to continue. They know there is another way to get him out and they said they will continue working until the end."
The government said more than 14,000 military and police officers are patrolling the state of La Guaira, where access is blocked and special permits are required to enter.
While rescue operations continued apace, episodes of looting hit La Guaira, much of which is in ruins following Wednesday's disaster. Pharmacies, supermarkets and other establishments were looted, residents said, some of whom complained about the slowness and scarcity of official aid after the earthquakes.
Political test
Delcy Rodríguez, almost six months into acting president following the capture of Nicolás Maduro by the US in January, stated that the search work "will not be suspended" and expressed that international rescuers had returned "hope".
Rodríguez claimed to have created a commission to assess damage to homes and verify whether it is safe for residents to return to the affected areas, highlighting that the search for survivors will continue.
The tragedy represents a significant challenge for Rodríguez. The American government has played an increasingly strong role in defining the country's future, while Venezuela has been in a state of economic disarray for more than a decade.
The country now faces an even more difficult situation, Ronal Rodríguez, a researcher at the Venezuelan Observatory at the University of Rosario, told AP.
The country now faces an even more difficult situation, Ronal Rodríguez, a researcher at the Venezuelan Observatory at the University of Rosario, told the AP. "There is political interference from the United States, the operational incompetence of a government that has led the country into a complex humanitarian crisis and, suddenly, an earthquake in a place that lacks the human capital and immediate resources to deal with the situation."
Venezuela's worst earthquakes in more than a century came after more than a decade of economic collapse in an oil-rich country. The crisis has weakened hospitals and public services, leading millions of people to leave the country.
The United Nations estimated the material damage caused by the current tragedy at 6.7 billion dollars, equivalent to around 6% of Venezuela's Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Amy Pope, director general of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), warned that the displacement of Venezuelans is expected to increase, as the crisis has already led 8 million people to migrate in the last decade.

Source: G1