How volunteers are leading the response to Venezuela's earthquake
As frustration mounts over government rescue and recovery efforts, everyday citizens are taking charge to find survivors and distribute aid.
Catia la Mar, Venezuela – Andreina Velasquez looks up at her multistorey apartment block overlooking Catia la Mar, a coastal city in the Venezuelan state of La Guaira. The concrete slabs that once separated each floor are now stacked on top of each other.
"They fell like a pack of cards," she said, pointing to where she used to live on the sixth floor.
Velasquez feels lucky. She left her apartment a couple of hours before a pair of deadly earthquakes shook Venezuela on June 24, reaching magnitudes of 7.2 and 7.5, respectively.
She had gone to get a new key cut and was at the beach when the first quake struck.
Her neighbours did not make it. She remembers one as a gentle, retired man, another as a woman with a young daughter who had just moved in. They had been overjoyed with their view of the sea.
Velasquez is still struggling to process what she has lost. Her state was among the hardest hit by the earthquakes.
But despite her grief, she has started to hand out face masks to passersby, hoping to shield them from the gusts of dust drifting from the collapsed buildings and the stench rising from the rubble.
“I've been here every day. Other people came to help, but they don't have helmets, they don’t have gloves, they don't have masks. That's why I'm helping," she said.
More than 2,295 people have been killed and 11,000 injured in the twin earthquakes, according to Venezuela's National Assembly. The United Nations has warned the death toll could rise to 10,000.
As Venezuela continues to confront the destruction, experts say recovery efforts have been driven largely by volunteers and neighbours like Velasquez.
Hospitals are overwhelmed, and government aid has been slow to reach some of the worst-affected areas.
Carolina Jimenez, the president of the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a research and advocacy group, told Al Jazeera that the result has been growing anger towards the state.
“In a government in any other country, the first responder should be the state," she said. "In the case of Venezuela, the state has been the last responder."
In places like Catia la Mar, north of Caracas, authorities still haven’t arrived or are lacking.
Velasquez and other locals say that help from the federal government only arrived on Sunday — three days after the earthquakes hit the country. In some parts of La Guaira, such assistance has yet to arrive at all.
"[The] response has come from citizens, from civil society, from humanitarian workers, from volunteers — but not from the government," Jimenez said.
Jeff Sombrito, a volunteer firefighter in Catia la Mar, has spent the last five days rescuing people and pulling bodies from the rubble. He has also been with some victims in their final moments.
"The most difficult part has been finding people alive but trapped, and not being able to reach them to due to moving rubble," he recalled. "We just had to talk to the person. Tell them to wait and keep calm."
Eventually, some of the voices fell silent.
More than 43,000 people are still unaccounted for, according to a crowdsourcing website dedicated to tracking the missing. Many locals credit everyday Venezuelans like Sombrito as leading the rescue effort.
Soldiers stand nearby on the main road in Catia La Mar, some clustered together in groups of three or four.
One officer from Venezuela's General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM) told Al Jazeera that they have been ordered to direct traffic and restrict access to some areas. He declined to provide his name when asked.
The outrage at the government's response has fed into the political backlash against the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), which has governed the country for more than a quarter-century.
Henry Alviarez, the national coordinator for Vente Venezuela, a leading opposition coalition, said authorities were failing to organise the response effectively.
“In the end, they are hindering the steps. What they have to do is organise in a coordinated way, create contingency plans, get all the volunteers to assist these people," he said.
"The indignation from this inaction is the regime's fault."
But the government of President Delcy Rodriguez has received key support from the international community, most notably the United States.
The US has committed $300m so far to the emergency response efforts, with President Donald Trump pledging his government "will be there for our new and great friends".
The European Union is also providing 5 million euros ($5.71m) in support. A flight is scheduled to leave early this week from Copenhagen, carrying about 50 tonnes of shelter material, water and sanitation equipment and education supplies.
Overall, more than 3,600 rescue and support workers and 118 search-and-rescue dogs from around the world are working to sift through the rubble with specialist equipment.
Those contributions come on top of a mass mobilisation of Venezuelan citizens. The capital, Caracas, has become a central hub for distributing donated supplies.
But critics have pointed out that some of the aid appears to be stalled or seized by the state.
Volunteers from the Central University of Venezuela, for example, said seven of their trucks loaded with supplies were taken by Venezuelan officials.
A local volunteer helping with search and rescue in Caracas and La Guaira, who did not want to be named due to fear of retaliation, said he was furious and felt the government had hindered aid delivery.
The volunteer blamed much of the death toll on state neglect and a lack of investment in infrastructure.
“It’s not the government’s fault that the earthquake happened. Of course not. But the number of deaths could have been prevented if we had invested in infrastructure beforehand," he told Al Jazeera.
He pointed to the Mision Vivienda programme, a state-run social housing initiative that built large apartment blocks across Venezuela. He said many of the buildings were constructed using prefabricated panels with lightweight infill materials.
"A vibration knocks them over. That’s why it brings down a wall, it brings down the roof," he said of the earthquakes.
In Catia la Mar, residents from one Mision Vivienda complex, where several blocks have collapsed, camped in tents surrounded by belongings they managed to rescue.
One man pointed to his apartment, now partially buried under another apartment, its kitchen still visible.
He then gestured to the block next door. "A young girl is still in there," he said. Nearby, a group of neighbours had climbed into another building, hoping to find survivors.
According to the World Health Organization, Venezuela’s healthcare system is "under significant strain" after last week's earthquakes.
There are 21 healthcare centres in the most devastated areas, according to the UN agency. At least three health centres are critically damaged, while six others have sustained harm to their structures or are only partially functional.
The need for such services, meanwhile, continues to rise. The thousands of people displaced by the earthquakes are at increased risk of disease outbreaks, including yellow fever and dengue.
Eduardo Rivas, a doctor who works at the La Florida Clinical Institute in Caracas and teaches medical students at Vargas Hospital, said many of the injuries he has seen so far are from blows, cuts and fractures. Some are severe.
He and other medical professionals are also contending with widespread psychological trauma.
"We already had a health service with great deficiencies in terms of infrastructure, medical equipment and medicines," he told Al Jazeera. "There is also a lack of experienced medical staff."
Rivas explained many medical professionals in Venezuela are young and relatively inexperienced, since many of the more experienced staff have migrated away from the country due to poor economic conditions.
Almost eight million people have left Venezuela over the last decade, including many professionals.
Venezuela's struggling economy has also put healthcare out of reach for some patients. Although medical care is technically free in the country, patients often have to pay for gloves, face masks and needles, and are even required to bring their own bed sheets.
But Rivas predicts the demand for healthcare services will only grow in the coming weeks.
"There will be an epidemiological problem. Problems will start to appear with respiratory diseases, both from the handling of debris and dust in contaminated areas," he explained.
"That will get spread in the environment, in the air and probably also in the water, because you are on the edge of the coast."
Yet, most volunteers working at the disaster sites do not have basic protective gear. Many are entering damaged buildings and gaps in the rubble searching for signs of life without even helmets.
Pedro Romero, a volunteer with Catholic charity Caritas, has been helping deliver basic supplies like tins of tuna, milk and detergent to collection points across Caracas.
"It has been overwhelming. The needs are far greater than what we can provide," he said.
Romero also helped with relief efforts during the 1999 landslides in La Guaira, known back then as the Vargas state. He observed that Venezuela's economic situation has worsened since then.
"Twenty-five years on from that moment, most Venezuelans are poorer and in need. Even those who want to help have little they can give," he said.
"To get gas in Venezuela is a problem. You sometimes have to wait two hours in a line just to fill up a tank."
Hope is fading for survivors to be plucked from the rubble. The first 72 hours after an earthquake offer the best chance of recovering those buried. But beyond that point, survival becomes increasingly less likely.
But locals are still spearheading efforts to recover those who may still be trapped under the remains of now-flattened buildings.
"We Venezuelans stick together," one huddle of volunteers could be heard saying in Catia la Mar. "We’re a family."
<small>Source: Al Jazeera</small>
