US military reopens battered Venezuelan port to speed quake relief, mass burials begin

LA GUAIRA, June 30 — The United States military repaired and reopened a key seaport in the hardest hit area of Venezuela yesterday, as the country began burying more than 1,700 victims of twin earthquakes that have left tens of thousands still missing.

Five days after powerful back-to-back quakes flattened entire neighborhoods, the task of recovering the dead loomed large and hopes of finding survivors faded.

By the latest official count, some 1,700 are dead and 5,000 are injured, with no governmental word on the number missing. Other estimates place these in the tens of thousands.

The Port of La Guaira re-opened, where an AFP correspondent observed a warehouse storing hundreds of unidentified bodies encased in white and black body bags as well as a few coffins. The USS Fort Lauderdale was docked and delivering aid.

Dozens of relatives from this devastated region waited outside the makeshift morgue for news of their families as forensic personnel in blue uniforms examined the corpses.

Nearby, buildings turned into mountains of rubble are being dug at by rescuers and volunteers in the hope of finding life. It is a remote possibility five days after the quakes.

American airmen were also helping restore traffic at Simon Bolivar International Airport near Caracas, which was also heavily damaged.

Yesterday, a new 4.6 magnitude tremor rekindled fear among the population.

Waiting for miracles

The government has militarised La Guaira and imposed a permit requirement to enter the disaster zone.

Residents are not hiding their anger over the government’s slow and limited aid in a country mired in a deep crisis that has driven millions to emigrate in recent years.

A total of 27 countries have mobilized nearly 40 search and rescue teams. They include more than 2,000 troops and personnel, along with more than 160 dogs, according to Gianluca Rampolla, the United Nations coordinator in Venezuela.

She said the United Nations will provide 10,000 body bags, though it hopes the final toll will be lower.

The critical 72-hour window to find survivors, however, closed Saturday at 6:04 pm.

Still, miracles can happen.

A 21-year-old man identified as Aaron Levi was rescued yesterday in the coastal town of Tanaguarena, according to a video shared by a photographer who witnessed the operation to pull him out.

The UN says that some seven million people in this country will be affected by the disaster, with the quakes knocking a US$6.7 billion (RM27.2 billion) hole in the economy — or 6 per cent of its GDP.

‘My family is there’

At Caracas’s only public cemetery, the two crematory ovens are working at full capacity.

Dozens of people are waiting their turn for their loved ones. Between Friday and Sunday, 60 to 70 burials were held each day.

A cry of “Mom, I love you!” rose above a steady low sobbing and the sound of shovels mixing cement.

When workers began to seal the niche of his nephew, Sergio Vergara fell to his knees. He was the one who found him, along with his entire family, in a collapsed building in La Guaira.

“It was a horrible experience, pulling him out, his children,” said the 42-year-old man.

And yet, many are still waiting for the remains of their loved ones.

“My family is there — I’m told my sister and her children are there, as well as the children of my brother,” Wilker Molalla told AFP as he waited to identify the remains.

“There were 11 people in my household; only two of us survived because we were at work,” he said, referring to his brother.

‘I am ready’

As the search and burials continue, politics is never far from mind.

Opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado accused interim president Delcy Rodriguez’s government of preventing her return to the country.

Machado went into exile in December, after spending more than a year in hiding. She staged a dramatic escape from the country to receive the award in Oslo.

“I am ready and close to Venezuela and will do whatever it takes for us to meet there,” the opposition figure said in a video on X, after denouncing what she said was the government’s closure of the airspace to prevent her return.

The government has not commented on the matter, nor has Washington, which is coordinating operations on the ground. — AFP