The death toll from the double devastating earthquake that struck Venezuela on Wednesday now stands at 1,430, the speaker of the parliament, Jorge Rodríguez, said today.
Rodriguez, the brother of the country’s interim president Delsy Rodriguez, also said 3,238 people have been injured and 3,100 left homeless since the disaster, speaking on state television.
The previous official death toll was 920.
There have been 430 aftershocks since Wednesday’s magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 quakes. More than 70,000 families have received assistance from the authorities since the disaster.
Three days after the earthquakes, the fate of tens of thousands of people in Venezuela remains unclear.
International assistance
Almost 48 hours after two powerful earthquakes, rescue teams from 17 countries are arriving in the affected areas of Venezuela, where the health care system is on the verge of collapse.
The US announced on Friday that it would deploy a 250-member mission to the affected zone after offering $150 million and sending two warships, transport aircraft and helicopters to the area.
Rescue crews from El Salvador, Mexico, Colombia and Switzerland were among the first to arrive in Venezuela.
In front of a block of flats flattened in La Vieira, the head of a rescue team from Chile, Nadiomar Polanco, said there was “unfortunately, little hope of finding survivors”. Rescuers from his team were the first to arrive at the scene and are now focusing on searching and retrieving “people who are already dead,” he added.
At least 28 people of Portuguese origin, two Brazilians, an Italian-Venezuelan and two Chinese are among the dead. Spain has confirmed the death of five of its citizens.
“Useless” principles
In La Huaira, home to the country’s main airport, which was shut down by the earthquakes, some residents are trying to dig their relatives out of the rubble themselves.
“He’s there,” sobbed Alessandro del Giudice, a 23-year-old man trying to find his father under a mountain of rubble. Desperate his grandmother, Ambaro, dug with her bare hands to find her son. “There are a lot of concrete blocks, we can’t lift them with our hands,” she weakly chanted.
“The authorities are useless… The army should be here, with all the equipment it has,” complained Archenis Mendes, a resident of the area.
After visiting La Warria on Thursday, Venezuela’s interim president Delsy Rodriguez, who took power in January after the ouster of Nicolas Maduro, went to an affluent neighborhood of the capital Caracas on Friday where a building collapsed and was met with boos. “Enough with the political campaign in the midst of a tragedy like the one we are experiencing,” relatives of those trapped in the ruins of the building shouted to her, according to an AFP reporter.
The losses are equivalent to approximately 6% of GDP
The damage caused by the double earthquake that shook Venezuela on Wednesday is estimated at approximately seven billion dollars, an amount equivalent to about 6% of the country’s GDP, according to the assessment of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) announced today by this agency.
This preliminary UNDP assessment, conducted in the hours following the devastating earthquakes, is based primarily on satellite imagery and demographic data.
The UNDP clarifies that its estimate “does not include the damage caused to infrastructure, the overall economic consequences or the long-term costs of reconstruction” and notes that the total impact is generally up to three times greater.
Almost 7 million people will be affected by the earthquakes
Nearly seven million people will be affected by the two earthquakes that hit Venezuela, with nearly 1,000 dead and tens of thousands missing, the United Nations estimated today.
“Up to 6.76 million people could have been affected by the devastating earthquakes that occurred in Venezuela,” including two million in Caracas alone, the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration said, clarifying that its estimates are based on available demographic data and damage analysis.
These estimates highlight “the potentially severe humanitarian impact of the disaster,” the IOM stresses.
Entire buildings collapsed in La Huaira, on the northern outskirts of Caracas, after last Wednesday’s devastating magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 earthquakes.
Venezuela welcomed 1,600 foreign rescuers
Meanwhile, the Venezuelan government announced today that 1,600 members of rescue teams from foreign countries have arrived in the country to help locate survivors of the twin deadly earthquakes.
Residents and volunteers in La Guira, a popular tourist destination where at least 100 buildings, including many high-rise apartment buildings, were destroyed or severely damaged, have for days complained of shortages of heavy equipment and a limited presence of officials.
“In the last few hours, Venezuela has welcomed 17 flights carrying more than 1,600 members of rescue teams, and in the next 24 hours, 25 more flights are expected to arrive,” said State Department official Oliver Blanco.
“We thank the international community for its support and solidarity during these moments of uncertainty for the citizens of Venezuela,” Blanco added in a post on X early this morning.
Rescuers are heading to areas around La Warria and the capital Caracas, although there was no official presence in some places yesterday as families and neighbors scrambled to find loved ones in the rubble, in many cases digging with their hands.
Officials closed the road between La Guira and Caracas last night, saying heavy traffic was preventing ambulances and rescue teams from getting through quickly.
Citizens who are not part of the official rescue teams will need credentials to get through the roadblocks, and citizens who spoke to Reuters said they were not allowed by police to use the main road this morning, while a side street was snarled.
The government had previously thanked citizens who brought aid, often on motorbikes, to those affected. Venezuelan state television showed footage of thousands of pairs of shoes, clothes and other aid items collected by the government.
Electricity had not been restored yesterday in the area near the epicenter of the earthquake, in Moron, as well as in La Guira, however it has been restored in other places, with President Rodríguez announcing that 60% of electricity has been restored.
Although the government says hundreds of people are missing or trapped, more than 54,000 people’s names are listed as missing on a website set up by the country’s opposition.
The United Nations estimates that direct damage from the earthquakes could reach $6.7 billion.
Source: RES-MPE