On La Guaira’s beaches, Venezuela quake survivors improvise showers and toilets amid water shortages

Source: THE AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

Thou­sands of peo­ple af­fect­ed by the dev­as­tat­ing earth­quakes in Venezuela last month are in­creas­ing­ly fac­ing chal­lenges ac­cess­ing clean wa­ter as well as san­i­ta­tion and hy­giene ser­vices.

Fam­i­lies in the hard­est-hit state, La Guaira, have tak­en to the beach to show­er and re­lieve them­selves, with ex­cre­ment now dot­ting parts of the once-crowd­ed Caribbean beach­es. Oth­ers are us­ing the lit­tle wa­ter that did not spill from their home stor­age tanks to do dish­es and clean them­selves. Many are liv­ing in tem­po­rary shel­ters or out­doors af­ter 190 build­ings col­lapsed and 856 oth­ers were dam­aged, ac­cord­ing to Venezue­lan of­fi­cials, in the back-to-back earth­quakes on June 24 that killed 3,685 peo­ple.

“We al­ways have wa­ter in the tank — wa­ter re­served — but with the earth­quake, most of the tanks in the hous­es broke,” Ju­liani Her­rera, 20, said of the large blue plas­tic tanks that many Venezue­lan fam­i­lies use to store wa­ter on days when the state-owned util­i­ty ser­vices the ar­eas. “Now, we have to wait to see if a tanker comes and fills buck­ets.”

Some of the af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ties on­ly had potable wa­ter ser­vice once every month or two even be­fore the earth­quakes. In Mai­quetía, known for be­ing home to the coun­try’s main air­port, peo­ple lined up Wednes­day to re­ceive a box bear­ing the Unit­ed States flag con­tain­ing food, wa­ter and a hy­giene kit that in­clud­ed a soap, tooth­brush and body cleans­ing tow­elettes.

Her­rera re­ceived one of the box­es that were hand­ed out at a makeshift shel­ter ad­ja­cent to the beach. She car­ried it for sev­er­al blocks, her chin, up­per arm and hands cov­ered with io­dine-stained scratch­es that she got when she fell from a mo­tor­cy­cle as the ground shook vi­o­lent­ly when the quakes hit.

Beat­riz Ochoa, re­gion­al head of ad­vo­ca­cy for Latin Amer­i­ca at the Nor­we­gian Refugee Coun­cil, in a state­ment said im­proved con­di­tions are nec­es­sary to pre­vent spread of dis­eases as peo­ple are liv­ing in dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed set­tings un­der high tem­per­a­tures and sea­son­al rains and with lim­it­ed pri­va­cy.

“I have seen fam­i­lies do­ing every­thing they can to main­tain dig­ni­ty in ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult con­di­tions,” she said. “In one tem­po­rary shel­ter, I saw fam­i­lies or­ga­niz­ing them­selves to keep com­mon spaces clean, in­clud­ing through makeshift toi­lets and ba­sic waste man­age­ment arrange­ments. Their de­ter­mi­na­tion is re­mark­able, but fam­i­lies should not have to shoul­der this bur­den alone.” —MAI­QUETÍA, Venezuela (AP)