Displaced families from across Caracas have been arriving at Parque del Este, a beautiful 200-acre park in the city’s east that was designed by the legendary Brazilian landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx.
Some of the earthquake survivors, like 49-year-old Leidy Cáceres, carry fresh memories of an older tragedy: the 1999 Vargas disaster.
Leidy survived the catastrophic mudslides that devastated Venezuela’s Caribbean coast, and now she has once again been displaced, along with her children and grandchildren, after the twin earthquakes that struck the country on 24 June.
“I was displaced back then, too. For me, this feels like living through the same thing all over again. I used to live in the El Limón neighborhood, on the road down to Vargas. We lost everything at that time. I was 10 years old.”
Leidy lives – or used to live – in the densely populated neighbourhood of Petare. She no longer knows whether her family will be able to return home.
A neighbour donated a tent, which she has been using to spend the nights this Friday with her daughter, who is two months pregnant, and her five grandchildren.
She said:
We left because we were afraid the aftershocks would bring our house
down. No one here has told us when we might be able to return. In
fact, nobody has given us any information.It’s ordinary people, our neighbours, who have been helping us. No one from the government has come to ask about the extent of the damage.
Leidy’s family is among the few fortunate enough to have a tent. Most people are sleeping on bedsheets spread across the park’s grass.
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In this powerful story, my colleagues Clavel Rangel and Tom Phillips have some details about the anger felt by many Venezuelans at the inadequate governmental response to the earthquakes. Here is an extract:
Venezuela’s communications ministry has also sought to project an image of unity and diligence in the face of the tragedy, posting social media videos of government rescue teams using sledgehammers and stretchers to pluck dust-caked survivors from the rubble.
But on the streets, there is growing anger at what many perceive as the sluggish response of a government unprepared for a crisis of this scale, and the way many feel they were abandoned to their own fate in the hours after disaster struck.
Rodríguez was heckled by frustrated locals while touring one badly hit part of the capital. “The government isn’t doing anything for the people!” shouted one critic.
Outside the mortuary, the relentless work of volunteers offering water, coffee and trauma counselling contrasted with the lethargic official reaction, which experts blame on years of underinvestment in emergency services, as well as the sheer scale of the natural disaster.
Similar scenes could be seen all across the traumatised city, as tents, mattresses and food were delivered to hundreds of families sleeping out on the streets because they were too frightened to return home, many with young children. If there is one thing not lacking in Caracas, it is the food provided by volunteers.
Argentine footballer's family killed in Venezuela earthquakes, team confirms
The wife and two children of Argentine footballer Lucas Trejo have died after the powerful twin earthquakes struck Venezuela last week, his team said on Sunday.
Trejo, who plays for Club Sport Maritimo La Guaira, a second-division team in Venezuela, had searched for his wife Yanina and children Aarón and Ainhoa in the rubble for three days before rescue workers recovered their bodies, CNN reported.
“Club Sport Maritimo La Guaira deeply mourns the irreparable loss of our player’s wife and children,” the team said in a post on Instagram.
Trejo, 38, was at a team training camp in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, when the earthquakes of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 struck on Wednesday evening, according to CNN.
He immediately returned to his home in La Guaira where he encountered “a horrific scene,” Trejo’s brother-in-law, Ricardo Ardiles, told CNN. “He found absolutely nothing of what the building itself had been.”
El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, has said rescue teams from El Savador, Venezuela and Mexico are working to pull out Aaron Levi Cantillo Vargas, 21, from a building he remains trapped under in Caraballeda, La Guaira state.
“We have already managed to locate him, and one of our doctors has been able to administer fluids to keep him hydrated,” he wrote in a post on X.
“Unfortunately, between our rescuers and Aaron lies the body of a deceased person, which is complicating the efforts to reach him.”
Venezuela’s coastal state of La Guaira was hardest hit by the twin earthquakes on Wednesday. Here are some of the latest images sent to us over the newswires as recovery efforts there continue:
All schools in Venezuela to remain closed this week - education ministry
All schools in Venezuela will remain closed until at least 6 June due to the extensive damage caused by the earthquakes that struck last week, the country’s education ministry has said.
The government has urged families to follow official channels to keep informed about the latest developments.
Schools have been shut since the two earthquakes hit within a minute of each other shortly after 6pm local time on Wednesday.
The education ministry subsequently said that some schools would be converted into emergency relief centres and shelters for affected families.
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There have been glimmers of hope in an ongoing tragedy that has shaken a country already mired in an economic crisis caused by years of crippling US-led sanctions, hyperinflation, government corruption and mismanagement.
A man and his teenage son were found alive under the rubble in Venezuela on Sunday, in a town about 40km north of the capital Caracas, AFP journalists reported. The discovery of survivors in Caraballeda was made by French and American rescue teams.
Thirty-three people were rescued from the rubble in Venezuela on Saturday, the country’s president said.
The US state department hailed the rescue of an infant by American rescue crews over the weekend, posting a video to X showing rescuers removing the wailing child from the rubble.
A Colombian rescue team saved an 11-year-old boy, Moises, who had been trapped about 3 metres (10 feet) deep in rubble, after identifying his location with a scanner, Reuters TV reported. He was removed on a stretcher with a broken arm. His mother and sister were killed.
On Friday, after 32 hours stuck under debris, a mother and her 18-day-old baby were rescued alive, as you can see below:
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Rescuers in 'critical hours' to find survivors as death toll reaches 1,450
The president of Venezuela’s National Assembly has warned time is running out to rescue survivors trapped under the rubble.
The death toll from the earthquakes has risen to at least 1,450 people, with 3,150 injured and 12,721 others displaced, Jorge Rodríguez said yesterday in a televised address.
“We are in critical hours, in crucial hours to continue rescuing lives and to build camps where those people who have lost their homes, or who cannot return, for whatever reason, to their residences can stay,” Rodríguez said.
More search and rescue teams are arriving in Venezuela five days after the powerful 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude quakes struck within a minute of each other on Wednesday evening, flattening buildings in the north of the country.
The second quake was one of the strongest tremors to hit Venezuela in a century. At least 68,900 people have been reported unaccounted for by their families.
Experts say the first 72 hours after natural disasters define the narrow window for rescuing the living. After that the search usually becomes one of recovering bodies.
Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, says power has been restored to La Guaira, a port city near the country’s main international airport badly affected by the earthquakes.
But there is a severe shortage of heavy machinery needed to rescue survivors and state manpower has been lacking, meaning the government is reliant on international aid for assistance.
