Hundreds of people in Venezuela remained trapped under rubble and many others were still missing on Thursday after two powerful earthquakes devastated areas in and around the capital, Caracas, killing hundreds of people, damaging buildings and leaving thousands homeless.
A 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck on Wednesday evening, followed less than a minute later by another 7.5-magnitude quake, the strongest since 1900, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).
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Health Minister Carlos Alvarado said late on Thursday that the death toll had risen to 235.
Jorge Rodriguez, head of Venezuela’s National Assembly and the brother of acting president Delcy Rodriguez, said earlier in the day that around 200 people remained trapped, while 250 buildings had been damaged or destroyed.
At least eight hospitals, the headquarters of the Venezuelan Red Cross and the French Embassy are among the buildings reported to have suffered major damage.
Interior Minister Diosdadao Cabello said about 70,000 families in La Guaira state had been affected by the earthquake.
La Guaira, the coastal state adjacent to Caracas and home to the capital’s main airport, is among the hardest-hit areas.
“It has turned into a disaster zone,” acting president Rodriguez said, adding that the government was working with private companies to bring in heavy equipment and speed up rescue operations.
Electricity is limited in some parts of the state, while Caracas airport has been closed because of the damage it sustained.
Emergency workers and volunteers searched throughout the night for people trapped in collapsed buildings. However, in some parts of the country residents said official help had been delayed.
Yamileth Jimenez, a resident of the city of La Guaira, said her 19-year-old son remained trapped under the rubble of the seven-story apartment building where they lived.
“He is under the concrete slabs and there are no machines to get him out,” said Jimenez, whose father had died just three days earlier.
In the city of La Guaira, volunteers dug through the rubble with their bare hands as families waited for news of missing relatives. Along the Caracas–La Guaira highway, groups of citizens were heading toward the coast carrying water, food and medicine.
“We lost everything. We have no food or medicine… We hope help arrives as soon as possible,” said Pedro Perez, 64, the owner of an upholstery workshop, who said he had lost his home and business and was now sleeping on the street with his wife and children.
Countries from around the world have pledged support, including some states that had previously opposed Venezuela, which for decades has suffered from international isolation because of political repression, economic collapse and diplomatic pressure.
Rodriguez said international rescue teams were expected to arrive soon and thanked leaders including U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Washington took steps to ease sanctions by authorizing transactions related to earthquake relief that would normally have been prohibited.
Trump said the United States was “ready, determined and able to help.”
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington would send rescue teams, while the Pentagon would help with logistics and support for Caracas’s damaged airport.
United Nations humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher said the organization was coordinating international rescue teams and that “a massive joint effort” would be needed in a country where, even before the earthquake, 8 million people needed humanitarian assistance.
The United Nations human rights mission in Venezuela urged the government to lift restrictions on some social media networks, stressing that internet access is “a matter of life or death.”
Venezuela lies in an earthquake-prone zone, and the deadliest tremors in the country’s modern history occurred in the northeast in 1997, when 73 people were killed, and in Caracas in 1967, when 236 people lost their lives./REL
