They have reproduced the predictable image that every catastrophe offers to public opinion: buildings collapsed in and out and deaths yet to be known. But the true dimension of the Venezuelan disaster is not measured only beneath the rubble. The shock has highlighted the reality of a State weakened by years of governance deficiencies and with enormous limitations to conduct a minimal response. The quality of assistance and the conditions of response and early recovery work that will be long and difficult in these coming months will depend on how international aid resolves this challenge.
The response to a large earthquake is, above all, a coordination challenge that must be greased in the first days. The international response architecture (search and rescue teams and medical teams) is designed to be coupled with a national structure that guides and illuminates the field. In, this boils down to a military coordination structure. Years of institutional emptying have left Venezuelan public administrations with little resolution capacity and without sectoral coordination and functioning mechanisms. The rapid request for international aid from the authorities to the international system in the face of the earthquake contrasts with the restrictions that for years have conditioned humanitarian action in the country.
The greatest strength of the national response lies in the mobilization capacity of the Venezuelan armed forces, not so much because of their capabilities and their preparation for disasters, but because of the number of troops they have together. However, what has been appreciated in these first days are the community networks, thousands of collection centers, and a supportive community self-managing its needs in the face of a State lacking the means. The scant presence of the Bolivarian National Guard in search and rescue efforts has been surprising while the desperation of the population becomes visible.
Years of institutional emptying have left Venezuelan public administrations with little resolution capacity and without sectoral coordination and functioning mechanisms.
The underlying risk in the absence of a minimum national leadership structure has a precedent with its own name in the region: After the 2010 earthquake, international aid unleashed a massive influx of resources on a severely weakened State, without a coordination center to organize the effort. The result was atomization, the creation of competing parallel structures and duplicate evaluations in the first seventy-two hours, which were consumed in disorder while . That this script is not repeated depends on the enormous experience of the international teams on the ground and on the United Nations (accustomed to a Venezuelan scenario of prolonged crisis) and the International Red Cross Movement helping the Venezuelan authorities in establishing a functional operations center that orders humanitarian deployment in and towards La Guaira.
The rest hang from that initial operational challenge. The first has been to ensure access for rescue teams to the impact zone. The Maiquetía airport (right at ground zero), the main gateway to the country, has been damaged and is partially closed, conditioning the initial hours of an international deployment that has not been as fast as other times. The operations to receive international assistance have been conducted from the El Libertador Military Area Base (approximately three or four hours away from ground zero in slow transit). The difficulty lies in how to make this humanitarian bridge between Maracay and La Guaira efficient, progressively incorporating Maiquetía into that response axis when it is fully operational. In that sense, the current command center located at the Carlota Military Base seems far from ground zero.
A narrow strip of land
The second void is physical, spatial. It is a very narrow strip sandwiched between the sea and the mountains, with hardly any space to deploy equipment and move freely. The congestion of physical space with multiple humanitarian operators in the middle of the ruins requires a clear sectorization of the terrain so that rescuers can move quickly in these last critical hours and a map on the ground of humanitarian services is drawn as efficient as possible and stable with a long-term view.
The third is health. It is difficult to know how many people remain buried or have died under the rubble. Hundreds of bodies and thousands are concentrated in a coastal area that has hospitals with limited capacity to absorb demand and greatly affected by the crisis in the health sector in the country.
It is necessary to launch a technical health cell, which coordinates the international emergency medical teams and the specific needs that are being demanded. The health resources that the international community is making available are key and must operate as a reference and counter-reference network connected to the health structures in Caracas, which are widely overwhelmed. Here the Red Cross and the Pan American Health Organization have ample work space to influence the authorities and make them see the appropriate scheme with a medium and long-term perspective.
The fourth challenge, which gains prominence as the days go by, is shelter. Thousands of people who do not want or cannot return to their homes (due to fear of aftershocks or because their buildings were compromised) are concentrated in squares and streets surrounded by mountains of rubble that we must begin to think about how they will be managed.
The ones, which already operate as the first shelter and distribution center in many impoverished neighborhoods, have patios and warehouses that can be converted into shelters. The same goes for schools and sports centers. United Nations begins to develop facilities. The challenge, in all cases, is not only to have the facilities, but to manage them with humanitarian standards. International NGOs have all the capacity to support this process in a sector that will be critical once the search and rescue efforts are completed in the coming days.
Finally, the Washington effect. The evolution of the response will depend on the role that people play in these coming days, not only in the response, but also in the following phases. There is already an important deployment of logistical capabilities through the Southern Command, naval and air assets and specialized equipment in support of emergency operations.
This deployment has an advantage that is difficult to argue with: in the first days lives are saved and strategic transportation, engineering, communications and management of entry points make it possible to accelerate the deployment of equipment and the establishment of a flow of assistance.
When a foreign response assumes command without a national structure having real control, it also assumes the power to prioritize
The reverse of that model too. When a foreign response assumes command without a national structure having real control, it also assumes the power to prioritize. In Port-au-Prince, US control of the airport resulted in planes from allies and humanitarian organizations being rejected or delayed, and in United Nations coordination relegated to the background. For example, in the, the relative success of the North American deployment was due, above all, to the fact that the military withdrawal was rapid and the operation was soon returned to civilian hands and local structures.
In short, the humanitarian community in Venezuela faces enormous political and operational challenges in a highly complex response. And it does so on a deep structural crisis, society’s rejection of the authorities and on the same slopes and coasts where in 1999 the mountain buried more than 30,000 people. This beautiful land and its people do not deserve so much pain and suffering.
