LA GUAIRA, Venezuela — When Daniel Cordero was pulled from the wreckage of a collapsed building in Catia La Mar, his face covered in blood, rescue workers carefully lifted him onto a stretcher while onlookers recorded the moment on their phones.
Three days after a pair of devastating earthquakes struck Venezuela, Friday’s rescue of Cordero and others is giving a glimmer of hope to families still desperately searching for missing loved ones.
The earthquakes — measuring 7.2 and 7.5 in magnitude — struck on Wednesday, and the death toll has been rising ever since. Government officials confirmed Saturday that at least 1,430 people have lost their lives, a number authorities expect to keep climbing. Thousands more have been wounded, and tens of thousands remain unaccounted for.
Search efforts pressed on through Saturday, driven largely by ordinary citizens, while an increasing number of international rescue teams have arrived to assist. Emergency aid organizations typically consider the first 48 to 72 hours the most critical window for finding people alive, though survivors can endure longer if they have access to food and water.
As volunteers and family members labored beneath a blazing sun, some of their efforts drew cheers from onlookers. A 4-year-old child was rescued alive. An elderly man, his eye blackened from the ordeal, was greeted with applause when he was brought out safely.
But for many others, the outcome has been devastating.
In La Guaira — one of the hardest-hit areas — Daritza Polo received the crushing news Friday that her mother had not survived. “I have no words,” she said.
The grief in La Guaira has been overwhelming. Siblings Leyder Rojas and Leymar Rojas, ages 3 and 10, were recovered from the debris wrapped in a sheet. Their mother collapsed in anguish as two women tried to support her, and she fainted to the ground. Rescue operations continued even as she lay there.
The children’s uncle, Ramón Eduardo, struggled to hold back tears as he described the scene. “It’s horrible, we have seen way too much,” he said. “We got one alive, thank God” — referring to the siblings’ 4-year-old brother Adrián — “but not all of them, we could not get them.”
For some families, the absence of any news at all is what they are clinging to.
The apartment building in La Guaira where Noribel Mendoza lived with her two sons — Andrés David Molina Mendoza, 21, and Ángel Eduardo Molina Mendoza, 19 — came down Wednesday, and no one has heard from either young man since.
“We don’t know if they were there, they weren’t there, if they’re in the hospital or a clinic, still nothing,” said the boys’ aunt, Ángela Molina Castro, 30, speaking by phone from Puerto Píritu in Anzoátegui State.
Molina Castro said another aunt has been standing outside the collapsed building waiting for any update, but no official rescue teams have appeared. Neighbors and friends have been attempting to move the debris by hand, though much of it is too heavy to shift.
On Friday, a friend and his pregnant wife were confirmed among the dead. Molina Castro said she hopes she does not receive similar news about her nephews.
“Even if they are not family, friends or acquaintances, they are still human beings like us,” she said of all the victims. “It’s a tragedy that I’m living for the first time in my life.”
Flor María González has been waiting since Wednesday for any word about her daughter, Dilinyer Caroley Rada González, 33, and three grandchildren — Jonas, 10, Ashley, 8, and Angely, 6 — after the apartment building where they lived in La Guaira came down.
González had just returned to the western city of Maracaibo after a visit with her two daughters near Caracas when she learned of the earthquake. She has been watching from a distance as neighbors and rescue teams comb through the wreckage.
Her other daughter has kept a vigil outside Rada González’s building, holding onto the hope that her sister and the children will be found alive.
“We still have faith,” González said.
