Four T&T athletes safe in quake-hit Venezuela

There have been no re­ports of Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als be­ing killed or in­jured fol­low­ing the pow­er­ful earth­quakes in Venezuela, ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs.

Ac­cord­ing to a me­dia re­lease by the min­istry to­day, of­fi­cials at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Em­bassy in Cara­cas have con­firmed that the Chancery build­ing sus­tained on­ly su­per­fi­cial dam­age. How­ev­er, it re­mains in­ac­ces­si­ble be­cause of ex­ten­sive road clo­sures in the sur­round­ing area.

The min­istry al­so con­firmed that four Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als were in Venezuela to par­tic­i­pate in a sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ty when the earth­quakes struck.

Min­is­ter of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs Sean Sobers has ac­ti­vat­ed the rel­e­vant con­sular and emer­gency re­sponse chan­nels to arrange tem­po­rary ac­com­mo­da­tion, ground trans­porta­tion and the ear­li­est safe trav­el back to Trinidad and To­ba­go for the ath­letes and their guardians. The min­istry said it is co­or­di­nat­ing those ef­forts with the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs.

It al­so said it con­tin­ues to mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion close­ly and re­mains in reg­u­lar con­tact with its coun­ter­parts in the Venezue­lan Gov­ern­ment.

The Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go reaf­firmed its sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple and Gov­ern­ment of Venezuela as re­cov­ery ef­forts con­tin­ue.

Na­tion­als in the af­fect­ed ar­eas who re­quire as­sis­tance or wish to reg­is­ter their pres­ence are en­cour­aged to con­tact the Em­bassy of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go in Cara­cas via: Tele­phone: 011-58-212-261-3748 | 011-58-212-261-5796 | 011-58-212-261-4772