Recommended
Relatives of victims of the earthquakes that occurred twelve days ago in Venezuela pleaded on Monday in La Guaira, the most devastated area, to stop the demolition of buildings on the verge of collapse, arguing that there are still bodies to be recovered.
For days, officials from the Armed Forces, Civil Protection, and other agencies have been moving forward with the identification of buildings that must be demolished or declared habitable in different areas of the seven states affected by the earthquakes.
"We cannot allow them to demolish this building when there are still so many bodies of relatives to rescue—alive or dead," 30-year-old Michell Gutiérrez told EFE, who is desperately trying to find her father to give him a proper burial.
She explained that her father's body is buried in a building in Catia La Mar and complained, like others, that she has not received government aid and that only international rescue groups have arrived in the area. In fact, a team from Mexico was present at the site.
"I have nothing, but the truth is I don't care about that. I just want to recover my dad and give him a burial and end this suffering because being here for twelve days is an agony, it is an agony, because we have already been here for twelve days and we don't know how much longer it will be," she said.
Iryuri Wisi was also looking in that same area for her sister, her brother-in-law, and her two nephews, one 16 years old and the other just a few months old. She complained that aid took too long to arrive and asserted that government assistance has still not reached that town. She even denounced that the militarized police have not provided them with support.
"I would have preferred to have died there than to continue with this ordeal that one has (...) we are abandoned, let President Delcy Rodríguez say how she has helped us, I feel abandoned and no longer afraid of anything, the fear is this, the fear is here, every time my relative, my son, my brother goes in there to look for my sister or her family and that (building) ends up collapsing," she indicated.
At least 3,535 people have died and 16,740 have been injured following the 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude earthquakes on June 24 in Venezuela, according to the latest bulletin published this Monday by the President of Parliament, Jorge Rodríguez.
The authorities, who set up a telephone number and a digital platform to report missing persons, have not offered updated figures of people whose whereabouts are unknown since June 25.
The citizen initiative 'Venezuela Earthquake Missing', a website for people to report their relatives whose whereabouts are unknown, has so far registered more than 30,000 people with whom contact could not be established.
After twelve days, many of the international rescue teams have withdrawn from the affected areas, and in the ruined buildings, there remain mainly Venezuelan volunteers, firefighters, national civil defense, and neighbors who continue to remove debris.
[Publicidad]