By Julia Symmes Cobb and Vivian Sequera
LA GUAIRA, Venezuela, July 1 (Reuters) – The command center hums with activity as radios crackle to life, medical staff stop in to say hello and supplies are arranged in orderly piles.
Though this organization would not be out of place at a military barracks overseen by generals, the deployment is taking place at the ‘Republic of Panama’ school in La Guaira, the Venezuelan state hardest hit by twin earthquakes last week, and the commanders – casually dressed volunteers – are aged between 20 and 27.
Their task is the management of a shelter for victims of the magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 quakes, which devastated this part of the South American country after striking less than a minute apart, killing more than 2,200, according to the latest tally.
The dozen or so staff – members of the youth wing of Venezuela’s socialist party – have designed a digital system to register residents, most of whom have lost loved ones, their homes, or both in the disaster.
The volunteer team is also largely homeless after the quakes, and rotate work shifts to staff the command center 24 hours a day. Like other shelter residents, they sleep in a classroom stuffed with metal bunk beds delivered by the commerce ministry.
The group’s system has information about each of the more than 350 people staying at the shelter, where an average of three families sleep per classroom. The program records their previous addresses, injuries, and who has yet to grab lunch in the cafeteria.
“We’re like the Titanic. We go down with the ship,” said Daniel Rivas, 25, as his colleagues searched the registry for a missing person sought by a relative standing at the school gate.
Showers, a medical clinic, a laundromat and cafeteria are available to the residents, whose children play in stairwells and on the basketball court.
Each of the nine shelters in La Guaira is run by a different team, the staff at this school said.
‘FULL OF RAGE’
“People are 50% very sensitive and 50% full of rage, lost,” said Jose Mendez, who is also part of the team. “They are angry about not finding their family members, about losing everything. But we’re ready to help.”
All the team members were born just before or in the years after La Guaira’s last major disaster – a 1999 landslide that killed up to 30,000 people.
Last week’s quakes have killed 2,295, according to government figures published on Wednesday.
An unofficial but widely used list of the missing stands at 40,567. A United Nations envoy this week said it was procuring 10,000 body bags for Venezuela and the USGS has estimated more than 10,000 deaths were possible due to the quakes.
The school has functioning bathrooms and places for play, but other shelters lack privacy, safe spaces for children and hygiene facilities, said Geraldine Gomez of NGO Plan International.
“There are no separate spaces for mothers, there are no separate spaces for children. Children have no space for recreation, for play, for talking,” she said.
Residents have criticized the government of interim President Delcy Rodriguez for what they call a slow and inadequate response by the state, while NGO the International Rescue Committee on Tuesday said the scale of the response was not meeting humanitarian needs.
Rodriguez in a post on X said that authorities continue helping those affected, as well as supervising recovery efforts. “I know that many Venezuelans feel pain and frustration. I deeply share those feelings,” she said, before declaring seven days of national mourning.
NEXT STEPS
The volunteer team at the school is waiting on two major next steps: visits from the registration authority, to replace lost government identification cards, and from the housing ministry, to clarify what people who lost their homes should do to get aid.
“I feel like I still have the earthquake within me,” said shelter resident Deisy Tapias, 36, who is staying at the shelter with two of her five children. “I wish I could go home.”
Her apartment further down the coast was nearly destroyed, though her 17-year-old son was able to rescue their identity cards and tank of cooking gas from the ruins.
Tapias said she was willing to move out of state if that is how she can replace her home.
Her mother, Deisy Bermudez, 55, has an intact home in a nearby community and arrived with clothing and food for her family.
“I can’t stand shelters,” said Bermudez, who lost her house in the 1999 disaster and said she missed out on government housing constructed afterward for victims.
As the women spoke with Reuters, an army transport truck pulled up outside, and soldiers helped eight new families carrying in sparse bags of belongings, where they were welcomed by the team.
Many of those arriving now have been living alongside the ruins, the team said, and searching for loved ones trapped under rubble.
STILL SEARCHING
Dozens of police officers line the road deeper into La Guaira, some directing traffic while others gestured waves of cars, trucks and motorcycles onward. Soldiers carrying automatic weapons stood guard at several intersections.
Deep into the rubble at the Hugo Chavez housing complex, known colloquially as Los Cocos, alongside what used to be a basketball court, a ragtag civilian rescue team, assisted by a handful of army soldiers, removed three bodies they began uncovering yesterday.
The volunteers first pulled the remains onto bed sheets gathered from the rubble and then hoisted the bodies into black plastic body bags. One bag ripped at the top.
The two women and one man died holding onto each other.
Just below them, civilian rescuers digging a different tunnel say they can hear a scratching sound, though not knocking or any voices. They do not know whether they are hearing a human or an animal.
Twenty-seven-year-old Yiscar Yzaguirre sat outside the tunnel, watching as her husband John Berroteran, 26, worked to remove debris from inside it.
He hopes to recover Yzaguirre’s father, Oscar Yzaguirre, 43, stepmother Elizabeth Vargas, 44, and eight-year-old half-sister Kristal.
Clad for safety in a black motorcycle helmet, Berroteran ordered silence on at least three occasions, so he could listen for a response from beneath the rubble.
Yzaguirre, who has been in Los Cocos since Saturday, said she was not sure whether those being sought could actually turn out to be her family.
“But it doesn’t matter. We have to get them all out,” she said.
(Reporting by Julia Symmes Cobb and Vivian Sequera; Writing by Julia Symmes Cobb and Oliver Griffin; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
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