A month after two powerful earthquakes hit Venezuela on 24 June, some are still sleeping next to the rubble, despite the intense smell of decomposing bodies. Whenever the rain eases off – it’s rainy season in the Latin American country, with frequent heavy downpours and thunderstorms – they climb down between the broken concrete, sometimes descending more than 15 meters. They do not stop searching.
I arrived in La Guaira four days after the magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 earthquakes shook northern Venezuela. I understood immediately that none of the images I had seen in the news or on social media could capture the reality of what had happened. I spent two weeks reporting the aftermath of the disaster.
The earthquakes have worsened an already critical situation. The UN estimates the preliminary cost of damage to buildings and infrastructure at $37bn, in a country that was already experiencing the worst economic crisis in its history.
Since 2015, Venezuela’s oil economy has been severely hit by mismanagement, the collapse of crude prices, and sanctions imposed by the United States, while the regime led by Nicolás Maduro since 2013 has intensified authoritarianism and rigged elections. On 3 January this year, a US military operation abducted Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, who are imprisoned in New York facing “narco-terrorism” charges. The same regime, now led by interim president Delcy Rodríguez – previously Maduro’s vice-president – operates under the tutelage of Donald Trump.
In La Guaira, a state on the Caribbean Sea where the country’s main seaport and Maiquetía international airport are located, Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis was already evident by 2018, when the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution urging the government to accept aid. Hospitals were in ruins, and there were daily blackouts, water and internet failures, endless lines to get subsidised fuel, and spiralling costs of living. When I left Venezuela four years later, these shortages had spread across the entire country.
Magda Gibelli
Diana Cariboni
Then came the earthquakes. Catia la Mar and Caraballeda were the municipalities most affected; in just 39 seconds, hundreds of buildings had collapsed and slid sideways, compressed like an accordion. Those inside had almost no time to escape. Many of the residences that were still standing lost external walls or upper floors; others were cut in half or left leaning, as if about to fall. Official figures suggest that, in total, more than 800 buildings have been affected, with 190 collapsing.
But more heartbreaking than the visible destruction was the loneliness of the survivors.
In the first week after the disaster, ordinary people sustained much of the immediate response. They provided water, food, tents, mattresses, and clothes for the victims, as well as the manpower and tools to clear the rubble.
The recovery of victims was left mostly in the hands of relatives. They chanted, “we are alone” over and over as they worked under the relentless sun to clear rubble with their bare hands, cut steel beams or open tunnels through thick concrete slabs with sledgehammers.
They protested the scarce presence of state rescue teams and demanded that the soldiers and police who had been deployed to guard the area – presumably to avoid riots – put down their weapons and help search for their loved ones. Firefighters and Civil Protection officers gradually joined the rescue efforts, many of them poorly equipped, without vehicles or resources to move around or perform their tasks.
In buildings where there were signs of survivors – often detected by neighbours – local people formed improvised work crews with the support of local labourers, miners and engineers, who shared their knowledge on how to make their way through the rubble.
The first to enter were the “moles”: mostly young people with no search and rescue experience, who were able to slide through precarious tunnels barely wider than their shoulders. Once inside, they looked for signs of life or death: any sound, a different smell, the buzz of flies, worms beginning to appear.
The moles also tried to identify apartment tiles, toys, clothing, and any other objects or documents, to determine which floor they were on. With the arrival of international rescuers, they learned the rescue signals, and for many, the raised fist has been burned into their memory forever – a sign of hope of life. Whenever somebody made that signal – raising their hand into a fist – everything else came to a standstill: the motorcycles, the cars, even those walking stopped. In the silence that followed, one question echoed around the rubble: “Is anyone alive?”
Soon, more than 3,500 rescuers arrived from Mexico, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Portugal, Italy, France, Spain and elsewhere, but the scale of the disaster made their presence seem insufficient. Among mountains of concrete, rescue teams searched relentlessly for survivors.
During that first week, no one had to ask for water or food; both were regularly distributed by vehicles organised by local people, which constantly passed by. They asked only for power generators and the gasoline to run them, saws, electric jackhammers, boom cranes, and satellite internet antennas, hoping that if someone trapped in the rubble had a cell phone, they could connect to the internet to report that they were alive.
Local people provided what little they had, with provisions from state institutions appearing only weeks later, and even then, resources remained scarce. Some relatives received donations to rent machinery, others received support from workers, but nothing was ever enough.
Ten days after the earthquakes, and with no further signs of life, the international rescue teams began to leave, and despair took hold of the families of the missing. Staying quiet to listen out for survivors was becoming increasingly difficult; everyone was in a hurry to look for their loved ones, and no one wanted to stop hammering or clearing rubble.
Help from all sources became less frequent. Instead of machinery, relatives began asking for water, energy drinks, face masks, biosecurity suits to protect them from decomposing bodies, rodents and polluted water, and money to organise their meals.
“We need help, our boy Massimo is still trapped in the Caribe residential complex, Tower C (with 208 apartments), 7th floor, at what was a little cousin's party. We haven't been able to rescue him yet,” wrote Eduar on his WhatsApp status on 18 July, almost one month after the earthquakes.
Eduar had returned to Venezuela from Colombia after losing contact with his family following the earthquake. With the help of relatives, neighbours, and friends, he managed to rescue more than 10 bodies in 24 days, five of them direct relatives. Every day the search became more dangerous: “Whenever I move something, something else starts to fall; it's very complicated. We are afraid because since it's a hole, someone could fall in there,” he told me. But he and his father, Alejandro, refused to stop searching. The last body Eduar was able to pull out was that of his 10-year-old child.
A few kilometres from the collapsed buildings, the other side of the tragedy unfolds in temporary makeshift camps where thousands of people who lost everything sleep in tents or in beds protected by tarps. Around 23,587 survivors are housed in more than 100 camps across La Guaira, the capital city of Caracas, and the states of Miranda and Aragua, according to official figures.
Some of these shelters are managed by the government and local and international humanitarian organisations. One of the area’s main industries was tourism, and most of the victims now rely on aid, having lost their income along with their homes.
Across the main avenue running through La Guaira, dozens of forensic officials dressed in protective white suits and blue gowns work to identify bodies. By the sea, on the path to the pier, the still-unidentified bodies lay in a row, covered with black bags and lime, surrounded by wooden coffins. Relatives arrive here to claim the remains of their loved ones.
In some cemeteries, spaces have been set up to bury unidentified victims. The deceased are assigned a number that corresponds to a file containing information such as the date and place where they were found, a description and photograph of the body, their belongings, and any identifying details.
As of this week, the Venezuelan government reports 5,546 people dead, 16,740 injured, and nearly 18,000 people left homeless. There is still no official figure for the missing, although a website set up to help people find loved ones puts the number at 41,000.
Magda Gibelli is a Venezuelan journalist and photographer based in Jerusalem. She has produced text, photo, and video work for outlets such as EFE, AFP, Bloomberg, The Times, and The Guardian, covering events in Peru, Spain, Mexico, Venezuela, Israel, and Palestine.
