T&T’s migrant community in tears over devastation caused by quakes

Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

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As so­cial me­dia videos show­ing col­laps­ing build­ings, ter­ri­fied res­i­dents and in­jured sur­vivors emerged from Venezuela on Wednes­day, mem­bers of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Venezue­lan com­mu­ni­ty watched in hor­ror, pray­ing for rel­a­tives, friends and their home­land.

The pow­er­ful back-to-back earth­quakes, mea­sur­ing 7.2 and 7.5 in mag­ni­tude, which struck 39 sec­onds apart, left wide­spread de­struc­tion in Cara­cas and near­by com­mu­ni­ties, prompt­ing anx­ious calls and mes­sages from mi­grants in T&T to their rel­a­tives.

In an in­ter­view at the La Ro­maine Mi­grant Sup­port Group (LARMS) learn­ing cen­tre at the St Bene­dict’s RC Church in La Ro­maine yes­ter­day, Venezue­lan mi­grant Yu­dith Thomas, 33, was in tears.

Her fam­i­ly was safe, but the suf­fer­ing of thou­sands of fel­low Venezue­lans af­fect­ed by Wednes­day’s dev­as­tat­ing earth­quakes left her over­whelmed with grief.

Thomas, who has been in T&T for al­most two years, said, “It is very sad to see what has hap­pened in my coun­try be­cause I saw when the per­sons (res­cuers) who try to help and they have noth­ing to help.”

Thank­ful for the sup­port her coun­try has been re­ceiv­ing, she said Venezuela is not equipped to han­dle a dis­as­ter of this mag­ni­tude.

“They don’t have lights. They don’t have noth­ing and the fire­fight­ers, the am­bu­lance, don’t work in Venezuela. Venezuela don’t have gas. How can they trans­port the peo­ple who are af­fect­ed? It don’t have noth­ing in Venezuela. It is very sad.”

She added that hos­pi­tals al­so lack re­sources. She re­called that she was par­tic­u­lar­ly wor­ried about one of her aunts who lives in an apart­ment in Cara­cas. Thank­ful­ly, her aunt, who suf­fers from Alzheimer’s dis­ease, was not in­jured but had to be re­lo­cat­ed af­ter her apart­ment was dam­aged dur­ing the earth­quake.

An­oth­er mi­grant, Zud­delis Qui­ja­da, 36, who has been liv­ing in Trinidad for the past four years, said she called her par­ents, who live in Puer­to La Cruz, al­most a four-hour dri­ve from Cara­cas, when she heard the news.

Qui­ja­da, who spoke in Span­ish, said, “My moth­er and fa­ther were very afraid be­cause they felt the tremor.”

She said her broth­er-in-law’s rel­a­tive and the grand­fa­ther of a child at­tend­ing the LARMS learn­ing cen­tre were buried be­neath the rub­ble and died.

Con­cerned that an­oth­er dis­as­ter could oc­cur, she said there had been ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 af­ter­shocks.

She said the Venezue­lan com­mu­ni­ty in T&T and oth­er coun­tries were unit­ed in prayer for their coun­try and fel­low coun­try­men. Heart­bro­ken by the wide­spread dev­as­ta­tion, death and suf­fer­ing of her peo­ple, Qui­ja­da ap­pealed to the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty for help, whether through res­cue ef­forts, food or med­i­cine, since Venezuela is not equipped to deal with such a dis­as­ter.

LARMS co­or­di­na­tor Ang­ie Ram­nar­ine re­called that when the news broke, she was com­mu­ni­cat­ing with mi­grants in T&T and Venezue­lans in their home­towns, and they de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as be­ing “ab­solute­ly dev­as­tat­ing.”

She said one woman was pan­ick­ing be­cause her son was in Cara­cas, but for­tu­nate­ly, he sur­vived. Ram­nar­ine said the oth­er Venezue­lans she spoke with were rel­a­tive­ly safe but brac­ing for pow­er out­ages.

Act­ing Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez de­clared a State of Emer­gency as res­cue op­er­a­tions con­tin­ued yes­ter­day, with 188 peo­ple dead, more than 900 in­jured and thou­sands miss­ing.

Mean­while, coun­tries in T&T, across the Amer­i­c­as and oth­er re­gions, and in­ter­na­tion­al aid or­gan­i­sa­tions have since of­fered as­sis­tance to Venezuela.

In a me­dia re­lease is­sued on Wednes­day night, the Min­istry of Cari­com and For­eign Af­fairs stat­ed that the Gov­ern­ment was “pre­pared to pro­vide any re­quest­ed sup­port and as­sis­tance to the Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties, where pos­si­ble.”