LA GUAIRA, Venezuela — Desperation is deepening in Venezuela as residents continue clawing through the wreckage of homes and apartment blocks, three days after back-to-back 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude earthquakes left communities shattered. With every passing hour, families fear the window to find survivors is closing.
Late Friday, authorities said they would restrict access to La Guaira, the area at the center of the devastation, citing disorder and traffic jams that were slowing rescue operations. Officials said entry would require official permits, though they offered little clarity on who would be allowed through. Acting President Delcy Rodríguez said Saturday on state television that more than 14,000 military and police personnel were deployed across the area.
Many Venezuelans, however, have begun searching for relatives and neighbors themselves, saying government rescue crews remain scarce in the hardest-hit neighborhoods. The confirmed death toll from Wednesday’s earthquakes has risen to at least 920, while more than 51,000 people are still listed as missing. Residents said the limited presence of official rescue teams contrasted sharply with the government’s public portrayal of a large-scale response.
Relief organizations typically view the first 48 to 72 hours after a disaster as the most critical period for pulling people out alive, although survival is still possible beyond that point if trapped victims can reach food and water.
“Each person saved is a miracle,” said Jorge Rodríguez, president of the National Assembly. “We are not going to hide absolutely anything about the magnitude of this tragedy.”
Anxious families wait to see if relatives survived
In La Guaira state, just north of Caracas, Nazareth Jiménez broke down in tears on a loved one’s shoulder as neighbors hammered and drilled into heavy concrete slabs from a building that had collapsed into a mound of debris. She waited in anguish for word on her siblings, nephews, nieces and friends, hoping they might still be found alive beneath the rubble.
“My God, how are we going to get them out of there?” Jiménez murmured.
Appealing for heavy equipment to move the collapsed structures, she urged both Venezuelan authorities and the international community to act quickly. “We’re making a call for help to the government and countries across the world,” she said. “There are still people alive in there.”
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 duplicates.
The number of injured was more than 3,300 as of midday Friday, and authorities said they rescued 243.
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.”
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Indeed, many continued to sleep on the street.
Omar Reyes said around 20 family members died.
“I’ve been left alone in this life,” Reyes said, walking through the rubble where two of his children were buried.
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 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.
International aid on the way
Venezuelan authorities said Friday that 861 volunteers from Mexico, the U.S., El Salvador, Switzerland, Colombia and beyond were in the country, and more were coming from elsewhere.
Acting President Rodríguez said she spoke to U.S. President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Friday and they reaffirmed their commitment to send rescue teams and aid equipment.
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Janetsky reported from Mexico City. Associated Press journalists Clara Preve in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Dánica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico, contributed.
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