As hope faded beneath the wreckage, rescue crews in Venezuela pressed on through the debris left by last week’s twin earthquakes, confronting the grim possibility that few, if any, survivors remained to be found.
The death toll has climbed to 1,943, according to a government official.
The government of acting President Delcy Rodriguez said thousands more were injured in the earthquakes and about 16,000 people were driven from their homes.
A website promoted by the country’s political opposition has put the number of people still missing at around 43,000.
“In the end, we believe the days have already passed and that what we will find now is death,” said Major Jorge Montanero, leader of the EQ11 team from Guayaquil, located on Ecuador’s Pacific coast.
“Unfortunately, things haven’t developed favourably,” he said while standing among the ruins after cutting through four concrete slabs of the building in an effort to reach four trapped victims.
At a makeshift morgue in La Guaira, established at what is normally the state’s main port, Andrea Montilla waited on a plastic chair beneath an increasingly oppressive marquee for relatives who had gone inside to formally identify the bodies of her cousin and his grandmother.
The 14-year-old was found in the rubble of an apartment building overnight and the family brought the remains directly to the port, Mr Montilla said.
“It’s been so painful, a very long wait,” she said, adding that her cousin’s mother is still missing.
At the morgue, staff were guiding families through face-to-face identification procedures, an official at the site, who was not authorised to speak to the press, said. Families can then receive death certificates and permission for cremation, the official added.
The official, who said they are from La Guaira and had lost multiple family members in the quakes, could not estimate how many bodies had already been returned to families or how many were still awaiting identification.
Toddler rescued after six days under rubble in Venezuela
Man rescued by ‘angels’ after days under Venezuelan rubble
About 59,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed by the twin earthquakes – which struck seconds apart with magnitudes of 7.2 and 7.5 – according to NASA estimates. The scale of the devastation is so vast it can be seen from space.
Not every collapsed building has been reached by professional rescue teams, with relatives and neighbours instead digging through debris themselves in search of survivors or bodies, according to survivors and residents from various areas.
“There is no doubt we are facing a figure higher than what has already been reported. I can offer an estimate: we are procuring – and this has been agreed with local authorities – 10,000 body bags,” Gianluca Rampolla, the United Nations’ resident coordinator in Venezuela, said yesterday from his Caracas office.
A boy runs past tents set up at a relief centre for those who have lost their homes in La Guaira
Venezuela’s state-run energy company PDVSA and private gas distributor Dome gas said in a release they are inspecting gas lines to some 600,000 consumers in Caracas to detect and repair leaks. Specialised equipment to detect leaks has arrived in the country, they said.
UN warns of looming hunger, disease
United Nations agencies warned that survivors would face mounting threats from hunger and disease in the aftermath of the twin earthquakes.
The World Food Programme is appealing for $50 million to provide emergency food assistance to up to 500,000 people over the next three months, the agency said in a statement, adding that it has the capacity to feed up to one million people if sufficient funding is secured.
An aerial photograph shows a collapsed multi-storey building and surrounding debris
The WFP has distributed one month’s food rations – including cereals, pulses, which include dry beans and lentils, and vegetable oil – to 1,200 people in La Guaira and has also established temporary feeding centres in the state.
Earlier this morning, the World Health Organization warned that Venezuela’s healthcare system was under significant strain, with at least three health centres critically damaged and six others damaged or only partially functional.
The thousands of people displaced by the quakes are also at risk of disease outbreaks like yellow fever and dengue, especially given relatively low vaccination coverage, said WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier.
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The US has sent 89 metric tons of essential supplies to Venezuela, the US embassy in Caracas said in a post on X.
“Our team in Venezuela is working intensively on setting up the emergency field hospital,” the embassy said.
“Very soon, we will be able to provide emergency medical care to those who are suffering.”
“There’s an increased risk now of outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases” such as measles and diphtheria, said Mr Lindmeier, due to low pre-earthquake vaccination coverage, as well as yellow fever, and other vector- and water-borne diseases, including malaria, dengue, chikungunya and Zika.
He said Venezuela’s interim president had reported that 38 hospitals had been affected by the twin earthquakes.
