Venezuela’s huge needs are not being met by earthquake response, group warns

LA GUAIRA, Venezuela — The response to Venezuela’s devastating twin earthquakes last week has not met the huge need created by the disaster , according to a leading international humanitarian organization.

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The International Rescue Committee, also known as the IRC, said the chances of survival for the tens of thousands still missing were shrinking dramatically two days after the critical 72-hour survival window. After that period, survival chances drop sharply.

“The scale of the response does not meet the scale of humanitarian need,” the group said in a statement on Tuesday.

The government of acting President Delcy Rodriguez says at least 1,943 people have died and thousands have been injured. About 16,000 people were left homeless.

A website promoted by the country’s political opposition puts the number of people missing at around 43,000.

At a makeshift morgue in devastated La Guaira, at what is usually the state’s major port, Andrea Montilla sat in a plastic chair awaiting family members who were inside formally identifying the remains of her cousin and his grandmother.

The 14-year-old cousin was found in the rubble of an apartment building overnight, Montilla said.

“It’s been so painful, a very long wait,” she said, adding her cousin’s mother is still missing.

Empty coffins were stacked throughout the port and bodies were laid out along a stretch of concrete in body bags.

An official at the site, who was not authorized to speak to the press, told Reuters they were from La Guaira and had lost multiple family members in the quakes, adding they did not have an estimate of the number of bodies already handed over to families or the number awaiting identification.

Jordanian emergency workers did rescue a child early on Tuesday, the only reported survivor on the sixth day of rescue efforts, according to Venezuelan authorities.

Losing hope

Rescue teams from Ecuador and the U.S. halted operations in the early hours of Tuesday at a site in Macuto, a town in La Guaira, when they stopped receiving responses from a mother and her three children trapped beneath a nine-story building after more than 40 hours of trying to get them out.

“In the end, we believe the days have already passed and that what we will find now is death,” said Major Jorge Montanero, leader of the EQ11 team from Guayaquil, located on Ecuador’s Pacific coast.

“Unfortunately, things haven’t developed favorably,” he said as he stood amid rubble after cutting through four concrete slabs of the building in an effort to locate the four victims.

Some 59,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed by the earthquakes — which hit seconds apart with magnitudes of 7.2 and 7.5 — according to NASA estimates. The widespread devastation can be seen from space.

Not all collapsed buildings have had professional rescue teams on site, with relatives and neighbors working to remove debris to pull out survivors or bodies, according to residents from various areas.

“There is no doubt we are facing a figure higher than what has already been reported. I can offer an estimate: we are procuring — and this has been agreed with local authorities — 10,000 body bags,” Gianluca Rampolla, the United Nations’ resident coordinator in Venezuela, said on Monday from his Caracas office.

U.N. warnings

United Nations agencies warned that survivors would face hunger and disease in the earthquakes’ aftermath.

The World Food Programme is appealing for $50 million to provide emergency food assistance to up to 500,000 people over the next three months, the agency said, adding that it has the capacity to feed up to 1 million people if sufficient funding is secured.

The WFP has delivered a month’s worth of food, including cereals, dry beans, lentils and vegetable oil, to 1,200 people in La Guaira and has set up temporary feeding centers.

Earlier on Tuesday, the World Health Organization warned that Venezuela’s healthcare system was under strain, with at least three health centers critically damaged and six others damaged or only partially functional.