Although the latest official death toll from last Wednesday's earthquake is 1,450 dead and 3,150 injured, authorities and rescue teams on the ground warn that these figures are dramatically underestimated and well below reality.
With 20,000 people still missing in La Guaira alone, the region is at risk of becoming an immense open-air cemetery. Despite nearly 96 hours since the tremor, hope still remains in some areas. Italian firefighters and U.S. teams work tirelessly to locate survivors. In Macuto, a survivor fighting for her life among the rubble of a building has been located. "There is a thirty-year-old woman alive in a collapsed building in Macuto, here in the state of La Guaira. She responds to our calls by hitting a pipe and has exchanged some messages via WhatsApp with her brother.
She is conscious and says she is there with two of her three children," explains Luca Cari, a firefighter spokesperson. Another rescue that has touched the world is that of Santiago González, a newborn saved in Catia La Mar thanks to the sacrifice of his father, who died protecting the baby and his mother with his own body. To the north of Caracas, the devastation is absolute. Volunteers move through a succession of ghost towns where the smell of decomposition is becoming unbearable.
In Catia La Mar, neighbors like Eduardo Hernández try to manually recover the bodies of their acquaintances. "There is a very strong smell coming out. We must hurry. With God's help, we will find them," he says as he hits the stone blocks with a hammer. Destruction does not distinguish social classes. In the Los Delfines complex, buildings up to 20 stories have completely collapsed, leaving entire families on the streets. A 15-year-old girl, Keyra, sums up the emotional loss of thousands of Venezuelans: "Nothing has been saved from my fifteen years."
The population's anger increases every hour due to what they consider institutional abandonment by the Government of acting president Delcy Rodríguez. Many residents report that the military deployed in the "ground zero" area only watch without helping in the debris removal tasks and are even accused of looting homes. Luisa Ermes, a preschool teacher who has lost her home, expresses collective frustration: "We are alone here. We know the situation is critical throughout La Guaira, but only a few firefighters have passed through here. And we need answers." Faced with the slow national response, families plead for the international community not to withdraw its attention from the area: "Speak about us, let the world know we exist."