Venezuelans with family members still missing in the strong earthquakes that shook the country on Wednesday night (24) are asking for heavy machinery to help with ongoing search and rescue operations.
In the ruins of a building in the town of Caraballeda, a woman named Ana Ancheta, whose relative was not found, expressed her frustrations with the lack of machines for teams to separate the huge quantities of .
“We need machines,” she told Reuters. “All this debris is heavy; they can’t move it by themselves. They just can’t.”
Industrial engineer Alejandro Serrano, 33, said there was a “strong smell of death” at the site of the collapsed building. He added that the machine operators who had promised to come and help clear the debris had not yet shown up.
International aid
More than 1,600 rescuers from around the world arrived in Venezuela this Saturday to support search and rescue operations.
They arrived on 17 flights, said Oliver Blanco, Venezuela’s deputy minister for Europe and North America.
“An additional 25 flights are expected to arrive in the next 24 hours. We appreciate the support and solidarity of the international community in these times of uncertainty for Venezuelans,” added Blanco in a post on the social network X.
Teams from countries such as Mexico, the United States, El Salvador, Switzerland, Colombia, Spain, Ecuador, Chile, the Dominican Republic and Panama joined the search.
