Shafaqna Pakistan: International rescue teams have begun winding down operations as heavy machinery clears the rubble left by Venezuela’s devastating earthquakes, but for many families the search for missing loved ones continues.
Among them is Raul Alvarado, who remains at the site of his collapsed 12-storey apartment building, believing his mother, father, and older brother are still trapped beneath the debris.
Their third-floor apartment in the OPP 26 residential building in the coastal district of Caraballeda—one of the areas hardest hit by the June 24 earthquakes—has been crushed beneath layers of collapsed concrete.
The death toll from the disaster has surpassed 3,500, while thousands of people are still reported missing, leaving families like Alvarado’s clinging to hope as recovery efforts continue.
Twelve days after the quakes hit, time is running short.
Diggers are already clearing parts of the OPP complex, shaking the ruins even as volunteers and families continue to burrow for the bodies of loved ones.
“They were together the three of them, hugging,” said Alvarado of the last moment he saw his family.
He managed to pull himself out of the rubble because he was in a different room.
“This building was full. My neighbor had five grandchildren, all them are trapped in there.”
Stuck in the layers of floors, a microwave, mattresses and crates of beer are the only signs of the building’s previous life.
Nearby a large excavator slams its shovel into another building’s remains.
The UN has estimated that as many as 50,000 people could be missing in one of Latin America’s worst earthquake disasters. The government has yet to give any estimate.
But the OPP complex is only one among the nearly 200 buildings that were destroyed or collapsed when the 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude quakes struck. Most of those are in the epicentre, the coastal La Guaira area.
All around Alvarado’s building lies destruction. Some apartment blocks are stripped of their facades. Others are fully collapsed, floor slabs stuck together. Others simply disappeared into rubble.
Dozens of families of the missing wait on top of mountains of debris where the OPP buildings once stood. Volunteers and firefighters dig small tunnels through the concrete floors to reach lower apartments.
Some sit under makeshift shelters, others use picks and drills powered by generators. Inside one hole, the body of young girl lays trapped, covered in lime.
Alny Pacheco, a volunteer working at one tunnel, said since the earthquakes they had taken out 12 dead. On Monday, his team had found another.
Source: Dunya News
