MARACAY, Venezuela — Inside a fashion workshop normally filled with sketches of elegant dresses and bolts of colorful fabric, something very different is being made these days.
Designer Efrain Mogollon sits at his desk surrounded by his usual dress designs, but his team of workers bent over sewing machines are not crafting his signature bright, playful clothing. Instead, with solemn expressions, they are assembling dark plastic sheaths to be used as body bags — a response to earthquakes that struck two weeks ago and claimed more than 3,500 lives, pushing disaster response services to their limits. Each bag carries a single embossed image of Jesus Christ near the zipper.
“It is a completely different feeling,” Mogollon said, as he loaded several of the finished bags into the back of an ambulance in Catia la Mar, a coastal neighborhood in La Guaira state near Caracas that was among the areas hardest hit by the June 24 tremors, which registered magnitudes of 7.2 and 7.5.
“At the same time it fills us with satisfaction to know that, from our small contribution and from our platform, we are helping,” he added, speaking on a street where buildings had been reduced to piles of concrete, brick, and twisted metal.
Much of the rescue and recovery work on the ground has been carried out by ordinary citizens, alongside professional rescue teams from across the globe, firefighters, and army volunteers. In the early days following the quakes — particularly in La Guaira — civilians also supplied a large portion of in-kind assistance such as food and clothing. Global humanitarian organizations, including the International Rescue Committee, have stated that the relief effort has not kept pace with the scale of need.
Back at the crowded workshop, Mogollon’s crew rolls out sheets of black polyethylene across a wide table. Colorful bolts of pink, red, and blue fabric lean against the walls, and dress mannequins have been pushed out of the way.
Seamstress Mary Castillo has been sewing body bags every single day for the past two weeks. She describes the work as heartbreaking, yet meaningful.
“It is very sad. But we have to keep working and make the effort to move forward,” she said.
