WASHINGTON POST: Venezuela earthquakes: Rescuers race to save hundreds trapped in rubble

Dust covered every inch of Jonathan García’s body, coating his eyelashes.

He spent hours digging through the ruins of what was once his family’s apartment building. He dove into a small hole in the mound of broken concrete and shouted the names of his wife and two daughters.

One at a time, the daughters replied, crying out that they could hardly breathe. But he couldn’t hear his wife’s voice.

She was one of at least 188 people killed in the two devastating earthquakes that rocked Venezuela around dinnertime Wednesday, the strongest to shake this South American nation in decades. More than 1,500 people were injured and many more were still missing, authorities said, as first responders and volunteers searched for survivors.

At least 250 buildings have collapsed and more than 200 people remain trapped in the rubble, according to Jorge Rodríguez, president of the country’s National Assembly, and Venezuelans were in a “race against time” to rescue them. Aftershocks continued to rock the country.

The coastal state of La Guaira, home to the country’s main international airport, is once again the epicenter of a catastrophe. In 1999, tens of thousands of people were killed and many more vanished when heavy rains caused flooding and landslides in the state, north of Caracas.

The magnitude-7.5 and magnitude-7.2 temblors on Wednesday night shook dozens of buildings in La Guaira to the ground.

Neighbours rushed to help survivors out of the rubble, but in many parts of the state, heavy machinery was scarce, leaving volunteers to rely on whatever tools they could find to carve through concrete.

In a cash-strapped country with decaying infrastructure just a few years removed from one of the world’s worst economic crises, the government’s capacity to respond to the disaster is limited.

The quakes come months after President Donald Trump ordered the capture of President Nicolás Maduro and declared that he would now run the country.

The State Department said Thursday that it was mobilising $US150 million ($218m) in aid through partners including the U.N. humanitarian agency.

Search-and-rescue teams from Fairfax, Virginia, and Los Angeles were deployed, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, and more were coming. The Defence Department planned to help with transportation and logistics.

Rescue teams from across the country and around the world were rushing to the most devastated areas, interim president Delcy Rodríguez said. She said she had asked private companies to provide heavy machinery.

Government responders didn’t arrive to help García and his neighbours dig through the debris until 9 a.m. Thursday.

Neighbours and volunteers helped him find his daughters, ages 16 and 22, and get them to Jose Maria Vargas Hospital, La Guaira’s main health care facility.

Emergency room patients had overflowed the building; at least 70 people lay with varying injuries on thin mattresses on the ground outside the hospital entrance. Some held their own IV drips. Blood smeared the ground.

A pickup truck pulled up carrying bodies covered in plastic. A woman’s foot dangled from the side, nail polish visible on her toes. People searching desperately for relatives passed sheets of paper handwritten with the names of the missing.

Nearby, volunteers dug through the wreckage of a five-story building. “There’s a person!” one man shouted. A woman pleaded that it was her relative. “Is she alive?” another person shouted. She was not.

Marbelis Guaicara’s 75-year-old mother lived on the top floor of the building with her sister and two nephews. Guaicara, 51, hadn’t made it here Wednesday night; she was busy helping rescue her 29-year-old daughter from a building in the Catia La Mar neighbourhood.

She sobbed. She struggled to speak.

“I just want to find my family,” she said.

Elsewhere, men on motorcycles drove by, shouted “Who needs water?” and tossed bottles.

The body of a man could be seen crushed between slabs of concrete. A young woman pulled up to the home, brought her hands to her face, fell to the ground and wailed.

Venezuelans across the country and abroad took to crowdsourced websites and social media to search for missing family members. One website listed more than 42,000 people, with photos and descriptions.

The United States was among several countries to offer help. Given the severe damage at the main international airport, Mr Rubio said — one of its runways was cracked — “we’ll have to rely on the Department of War to deploy assets there.”

Among the resources expected to be deployed was the USS Fort Lauderdale, already at sea in the region with sailors, Marines and aircraft aboard, according to an official familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details.

The amphibious warship would give US troops a logistics hub from which to launch helicopters and send in relief materials. The State Department has requested military aircraft to deliver supplies and relief workers, troops to perform airfield management, and public affairs support to document the work, two officials said. The coordination includes officials already deployed to Panama on other assignments.

Family members waited outside collapsed buildings early Thursday while first responders and volunteers laboured. In the hard-hit Altamira neighbourhoud of Caracas, Jose Morillo, 61, had waited through the night to find his older brother.

His niece and nephew were receiving treatment at a nearby hospital. A rescue team searched the rubble, but the electric generator wasn’t working, and they lacked basic tools such as hammers.

Mr Morillo waited and prayed.

“Too much time has passed,” he said after midnight. “It’s already been many hours.”

Rescue workers eventually found his brother and sister-in-law. They had been crushed by a concrete slab, Mr Morillo said. The rescue team had not yet been able to move the slab.

A woman was trapped below them, calling out for help. As of 10am (local time), she was still stuck in the rubble.

Schmidt reported from Washington. Tara Copp, Dan Lamothe and Karen DeYoung in Washington contributed to this report.

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