Government offers support to Venezuela as Earthquake damage mounts

The Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go has ex­pressed sol­i­dar­i­ty with Venezuela and of­fered as­sis­tance fol­low­ing a pow­er­ful earth­quake that struck off the South Amer­i­can coun­try's coast on Wednes­day.

In a me­dia re­lease is­sued on Wednes­day night, the Min­istry of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs said Trinidad and To­ba­go stood with the Gov­ern­ment and peo­ple of Venezuela in the af­ter­math of the seis­mic event, which trig­gered wide­spread con­cern across the re­gion.

"The Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go stands pre­pared to pro­vide any re­quest­ed sup­port and as­sis­tance to the Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties, where pos­si­ble," the min­istry said.

The min­istry said it re­mained mind­ful of the Caribbean re­gion's vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to nat­ur­al dis­as­ters and shared the anx­i­ety of Venezue­lans as au­thor­i­ties as­sessed the im­pact of the earth­quake and be­gan re­cov­ery ef­forts.

It al­so con­firmed that Trinidad and To­ba­go's diplo­mat­ic mis­sion in Cara­cas was not sig­nif­i­cant­ly af­fect­ed and that of­fi­cials were con­tin­u­ing to mon­i­tor de­vel­op­ments close­ly.

The state­ment came as re­ports emerged of sig­nif­i­cant dam­age in Venezuela fol­low­ing two pow­er­ful earth­quakes that struck west of Cara­cas on Wednes­day af­ter­noon.

Ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed States Ge­o­log­i­cal Sur­vey (US­GS), a mag­ni­tude 7.2 earth­quake was fol­lowed less than a minute lat­er by a mag­ni­tude 7.5 tremor ap­prox­i­mate­ly 160 kilo­me­tres west of the Venezue­lan cap­i­tal.

Sci­en­tists warned that ca­su­al­ties could be sub­stan­tial, with the US­GS ini­tial­ly es­ti­mat­ing a 44 per cent prob­a­bil­i­ty that fa­tal­i­ties could range be­tween 10,000 and 100,000 peo­ple.

Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties had not re­leased an of­fi­cial na­tion­al death toll up to Wednes­day evening, but lo­cal of­fi­cials re­port­ed build­ing col­laps­es, in­juries and res­cue op­er­a­tions in sev­er­al ar­eas.

In­te­ri­or Min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo said emer­gency ser­vices, in­clud­ing fire­fight­ers and po­lice, had been mo­bilised to re­spond to the dis­as­ter.

Video footage showed res­cue crews search­ing through col­lapsed struc­tures in Cara­cas, while res­i­dents de­scribed flee­ing in­to the streets as build­ings shook vi­o­lent­ly.

In the Cara­cas mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty of Cha­cao, May­or Gus­ta­vo Duque re­port­ed that two build­ings had col­lapsed, leav­ing at least 16 peo­ple in­jured. He al­so con­firmed fa­tal­i­ties but did not pro­vide a fig­ure.

Hos­pi­tals in the cap­i­tal were prepar­ing for an in­flux of pa­tients, while re­ports on so­cial me­dia sug­gest­ed dam­age to in­fra­struc­ture, in­clud­ing build­ings near the coun­try's main air­port.

A tsuna­mi threat was briefly is­sued for parts of the Caribbean fol­low­ing the earth­quakes but was with­drawn ap­prox­i­mate­ly an hour lat­er.

"The peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go cher­ish the fra­ter­nal bond with the peo­ple of Venezuela, and in the spir­it of the en­dur­ing friend­ship and close bi­lat­er­al ties be­tween our two na­tions, the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go stands pre­pared to pro­vide any re­quest­ed sup­port and as­sis­tance to the Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties, where pos­si­ble," the min­istry said.