Venezuelans search more earthquake ruins as aftershock rattles rescuers in disaster zone

With the win­dow for find­ing sur­vivors shrink­ing fast, Venezue­lans combed Mon­day through more ru­ins of build­ings top­pled by last week’s dev­as­tat­ing back-to-back earth­quakes, and a 4.6 mag­ni­tude af­ter­shock rum­bled through the dis­as­ter zone in the north­ern state of La Guaira.

Five days have passed since the twin earth­quakes struck north­ern Venezuela, killing more than 1,450 peo­ple, ac­cord­ing to the gov­ern­ment. Re­lief or­ga­ni­za­tions say the first 72 hours af­ter a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter is the most cru­cial time pe­ri­od for res­cues, though sur­vival can be ex­tend­ed if peo­ple have ac­cess to food and wa­ter.

Fam­i­lies kept vig­il at search sites in hard-hit La Guaira, where lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al res­cue teams bat­tled ex­haus­tion and the grim knowl­edge that the chances of find­ing life were rapid­ly di­min­ish­ing.

Ana Ra­da watched in­tent­ly as civ­il de­fense work­ers searched the rub­ble of a col­lapsed apart­ment for her miss­ing broth­er.

“We have to stay strong, even with­out food, with­out sleep,” she said, wip­ing her eyes. “Un­til I see the body, I still have hope.”

Af­ter­shock rat­tles res­cuers

The af­ter­shock, which struck about 27 kilo­me­ters (17 miles) north of Cara­balle­da on Venezuela’s Caribbean coast, mea­sured 4.6 on the Richter scale, ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed States Ge­o­log­i­cal Sur­vey. Colom­bia’s ge­o­log­i­cal sur­vey put the mag­ni­tude at 5.1.

Jorge Ro­dríguez, the leader of the Venezue­lan Na­tion­al As­sem­bly, said there were no im­me­di­ate re­ports of ad­di­tion­al dam­age, but the af­ter­shock sent res­i­dents in the cap­i­tal of Cara­cas scream­ing in­to the streets.

“Here we are again, back in the street. I don’t know when we’ll have a mo­ment of true peace,” said Con­cep­ción Hernán­dez, 51, who evac­u­at­ed her apart­ment build­ing in the Cha­cao mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty of Cara­cas.

One res­cuer said he was de­port­ed from US

One of the res­cuers work­ing Mon­day in La Guaira was min­er Jean Sosa, who said he was de­port­ed from the Unit­ed States in Jan­u­ary over a missed im­mi­gra­tion court hear­ing and ar­rived in Cara­cas last month, dazed by an odyssey that he said be­gan in shack­les at an Ari­zona im­mi­gra­tion de­ten­tion cen­ter. The jour­ney in­volved trav­el­ing by bus through five coun­tries af­ter im­mi­gra­tion agents left him in south­ern Mex­i­co with­out his pass­port, phone or wal­let.

Sosa, 31, was check­ing on some fam­i­ly friends in La Guaira when the earth­quakes hit Wednes­day. For days, he raced to pull peo­ple from the rub­ble in the ab­sence of na­tion­al res­cue teams.

“I’m not in­volved in pol­i­tics, but I be­lieve many peo­ple could have been saved if there had been equip­ment and sup­port from top au­thor­i­ties from the very be­gin­ning,” he told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press, wear­ing a hel­met and a black T-shirt splotched with dust in the port city where he said he had al­ready res­cued 20 peo­ple alive. Those res­cues heart­ened him, he said, and gave him hope for more de­spite a dire lack of sup­plies.

“We’re work­ing with­out gloves, with­out equip­ment, bor­row­ing sup­plies, im­pro­vis­ing ban­dages and what­ev­er else we can,” he said. “But we’re still here, still fight­ing.”

Gov­ern­ment and UN of­fer vast­ly dif­fer­ent num­bers of peo­ple af­fect­ed

Jorge Ro­dríguez, who is the broth­er of act­ing Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez, said that as of Mon­day, a to­tal of 12,721 peo­ple had been af­fect­ed, while the num­ber of dam­aged or col­lapsed build­ings had reached 774.

The Unit­ed Na­tions, how­ev­er, has said that up to 6.8 mil­lion of Venezuela’s near­ly 30 mil­lion res­i­dents may be af­fect­ed by the earth­quakes, which could mean be­ing dis­placed or los­ing ac­cess to es­sen­tial ser­vices such as elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter.

Be­cause of the chaos and poor cell­phone ser­vice, many Venezue­lans have turned to non-gov­ern­men­tal dig­i­tal data­bas­es to re­port their loved ones as miss­ing. More than 50,000 peo­ple were re­port­ed miss­ing on one such data­base, though it is un­clear how many have been found.

Ro­dríguez, faced with grow­ing anger over a re­sponse crit­i­cized as slow and in­ad­e­quate, sought to re­as­sure the pop­u­la­tion that res­cue ef­forts were far from fin­ished, even though the 72-hour mark had passed.

She shared footage on so­cial me­dia Mon­day of first re­spon­ders lift­ing Aaron Levi Can­til­lo, 21, out of the ru­ins on a stretch­er to ap­plause af­ter what she said was a gru­el­ing 43-hour op­er­a­tion. —LA GUAIRA, Venezuela (AP)

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Sto­ry by JUAN PABLO AR­RAEZ and IS­ABEL DE­BRE | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

De­Bre re­port­ed from Buenos Aires, Ar­genti­na. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Jorge Rue­da and Regi­na Gar­cia Cano in Cara­cas, Venezuela, con­tributed to this re­port.