“It was terrible. Everything, everything collapsed”, laments Yilsmaris Blanco as she watches, astonished, the disaster that has turned into Catia to Marone of the cities most affected by the double earthquake that leveled dozens of buildings not Venezuelan state of La Guaira.
“We thank God because (…) we are alive, but there are people who are now suffering with their buried family members, with their family members trapped under the rubble, who they cannot get out,” this 39-year-old woman told AFP.
(24), caused the death of at least 164 people e left almost a thousand injuredin addition to an undetermined number of people missing under the rubble in various regions of the country.
To the north, facing the Caribbean, La Guaira40 minutes from Caracas and where Maiquetía international airport is located, was the most affected region. The interim government declared it a “disaster zone”.
“We have nothing, now we have nothing, not even the strength, not even the courage to go in there, just imagine,” says Larry Rojas, 49 years old and one of the thousands of residents affected in an area of Catia la Mar with almost 200 residential towers.
Some of these buildings remain standing as best they can, with large cracks and open walls visible from the outside, an AFP team found on a tour of the site.
Dozens of others, however, were completely destroyed and reduced to rubble. There is no electricity in much of the area, and dozens of residents spend the night on the street. In the midst of this darkness, they fear that there will be more of the more than twenty aftershocks they have already felt.
“There are survivors down there”, warns Lisbeth Vasquez, another resident who managed to escape with her family from one of the buildings that collapsed.
‘What’s needed is help’
In the middle of the night, dozens of rescuers worked as best they could among the rubble, while authorities closely watched citizens trying to find their relatives on their own, shouting their names.
AFP journalists witnessed family members recovering the bodies of a man and a woman and placing them in the back of a pickup truck.
They also saw a well-known pharmacy in Catia La Mar with the glass doors destroyed and the shelves empty, without the authorities being able to confirm whether there had been looting after the emergency.
“What is missing is help, especially with the technical equipment, the equipment that is in Caracas, that knows which (tools) to use, that can come and help here in La Guaira, let them come”, panted José Pacheco, head of operations at Grupo Rescate Unidos de Venezuela.
“You can see how structures, like this one here, are completely collapsed, and what is missing is help,” adds the 52-year-old rescuer, counting around 14 affected structures around him.
Pacheco, with three decades of experience, states that he has “never” seen “anything like it”.
‘It was sudden’
Antonio Bermúdez, 48 years old, resident of La Guaira, was in the living room of his house when “suddenly” the tremor began. “I started to move, I looked for refuge under a column. I was between my room and the shower. I was shaking harder, shaking harder”, he recalls.
“I held on to the wall, held on to the wall, held on to the wall and the building started to collapse,” he explains, as he tries to straighten a leg that he can’t move after a ‘plate’ fell on him as he tried to get out from under the rubble.
Faced with a lack of light, some residents run through the streets with flashlights, while emergency vehicles briefly illuminate the streets with their sirens and survivors seek refuge.
“We also have no water, we are dying of thirst, we entered the structure and we are afraid that it too will collapse”, adds Larry Rojas.
“For someone to really help us, for them to send machines. That’s what we need to get into the collapsed buildings”, he asks.
