标签： South America

Nine days after devastating twin earthquakes tore through Venezuela’s coastal state of La Guaira, the death toll has climbed above 2,600, overwhelming local emergency and mortuary services and forcing authorities to repurpose a disused port storage facility at Los Silos into a makeshift morgue. What was once a working hub of commerce now stands as a grim center of grief, where exhausted, anguished families wait for hours, even days, to confirm the fates of loved ones missing since the tremors collapsed buildings and buried neighbourhoods across the region.

Many of the people gathered at the site have already spent days searching through damaged hospitals, emergency shelters, and piles of rubble, chasing every faint lead to find their relatives. Rows of empty chairs line the facility’s interior and exterior walkways, and a thick, heavy silence hangs over the crowd. Sadness spreads through the gathered families like a contagion: few speak, some stare vacantly into open space, while others refresh news feeds or mechanically reply to messages of condolence on their phones. Armed Bolivarian National Armed Forces personnel control access to the facility, a necessary security measure that does little to soften the raw anxiety of those waiting to enter.

Before stepping through the gate, one woman waiting to identify her missing nephew, who has been unaccounted for for nearly a week, summed up the conflicting feelings that grip every family: “I’m afraid of what I’m going to see in there, but it’s the only way to end this agony.” She told reporters she had searched every possible location for him—through the rubble of his collapsed apartment building, at every local hospital, speaking to every survivor and rescue worker she could find—with no answers.

Inside the makeshift morgue, the acrid smell of decomposition hits visitors first, a product of sweltering tropical heat that speeds the breakdown of remains left uncovered or stored in basic temporary tents, after the disaster destroyed most standing infrastructure in the region. Hundreds of recovered bodies are laid out in rows, wrapped only in thin plastic bags, sorted by the date they were pulled from the rubble. Many families cover their mouths with bare hands or low-quality cloth masks, which offer barely any relief from the stench; within minutes, most grow numb to the scent, their emotions too drained to react further.

Forensic and medical teams work around the clock against overwhelming odds to identify victims. At one end of the facility, a temporary tent offers free cremation services for unclaimed or identified remains. At the other, specialists rely on the few tools they have—mostly dental records—to match bodies to names when decomposition has left remains unrecognizable to family members.

Relatives face two paths to identification. Those confident they can recognize a loved one by their clothing are escorted to the area where bodies are laid out. The vast majority, however, are directed to two large television screens, where they begin a new, grueling ordeal: scrolling through more than 1,000 photos of recovered bodies, displayed in an endless loop. Many of the photos show remains swollen from decomposition, with darkened skin or severe traumatic injury, making positive identification extremely difficult. Families scan each image for any small, unique marker: a tattoo, a favorite bracelet, a distinctive piece of clothing, a trinket carried from home.

Occasionally, the scrolling pauses, sparking a flicker of hope. Forensic workers use iPads to zoom in on a tattoo, a unique dental structure, or a scar that matches a family’s description. In one harrowing moment in front of the screens, a woman broke down into loud sobs when she recognized her son from a frayed, dusty blanket wrapped around his remains; a stranger standing beside her immediately wrapped her in a quiet embrace, sharing in her grief. When a phone cut through the heavy silence, a young man whispered into the line that he was searching for his mother, but the condition of the remains made it impossible to confirm if he had found her. “This is like a horror movie,” he quietly shared.

For 60-year-old Liliana González, a Catia La Mar resident who traveled to Los Silos to search for her missing aunt, the unthinkable became reality when she spotted her 37-year-old nephew’s distinctive tattoo in the photo stream. “He wasn’t on the list,” she explained as she left the facility. “I had to look at the images.” González, who had seen her own mother after her death, said the experience was unlike anything she had ever endured. She still has not found her aunt, who remains buried under rubble, and fears she will have to return to the morgue in coming days to go through the agonizing process again. After she was told she would have to identify her nephew alone, two forensic workers stayed with her through the entire process to help her through the trauma. “Thank God, because in a moment like that, it’s good to feel someone’s hand,” she said.

For others, the agony of waiting and the dread of seeing a loved one’s remains leads them to wait outside, letting younger relatives handle the identification process. Fifty-six-year-old Modesta Alemán traveled from Carayaca, in western La Guaira, to search for her older sister Matilde, who lived in Playa Grande—one of the hardest hit neighborhoods hit by the quakes. “They told us there were no survivors,” Alemán said. She added that volunteers had reported hearing voices calling out from the rubble of her sister’s building days after the quake, but that no rescue teams were able to reach them. Alemán chose not to enter the morgue, waiting outside as other relatives went in to check for Matilde. “Perhaps it is better this way,” she said quietly.

Forty-two-year-old Jéssica Soto has already waited two full days at the entrance to Los Silos for the remains of her 15-year-old daughter and three-year-old granddaughter, who were trapped in their apartment when the earthquakes struck. Their bodies were recovered nearly a week later, on a Tuesday. “They keep you waiting and waiting for the paperwork, the trucks, and who knows what else,” Soto told reporters. “They have had them there in a coffin, sitting out in the sun since yesterday. I have no choice but to wait and trust in God.”

Once a positive identification is made, the bureaucratic process of releasing remains begins: technicians collect fingerprints when possible, bodies are transferred to coffins, and families must fill out the paperwork for an official death certificate—required before funeral homes can take possession of the remains for burial. For thousands of Venezuelan families already reeling from the destruction of the disaster, this slow, agonizing process at the Los Silos makeshift morgue is just the latest hurdle in navigating the aftermath of one of the deadliest natural disasters in the country’s recent history.

Eight days after powerful twin earthquakes devastated Venezuela’s northern coastal state of La Guaira, interim President Delcy Rodríguez has broken her weeks-long silence to publicly defend her government’s controversial disaster response — just as her 180-day temporary mandate was set to expire Friday.

The June 24 quakes have already claimed more than 2,295 lives, according to the latest official government tally. But a civilian-led non-governmental digital database puts the human cost far higher, with more than 38,000 people still registered as missing across the hard-hit region.

Critics have slammed the interim administration for a slow and disjointed response: Rodríguez waited more than an hour after the first tremor to issue her first public statement, and did not hold a formal news conference on the disaster until last Thursday, eight days after the event. This delay stands in sharp contrast to global disaster response norms, which hold that the so-called “golden 72 hours” after a disaster are the most critical window for finding trapped survivors alive. With each passing day, the odds of pulling people alive from rubble drop exponentially.

Despite the elapsed time, exhausted rescue crews were still sifting through collapsed structures across La Guaira’s ruined communities Friday, buoyed by a small moment of hope just one day prior: a 43-year-old security guard was pulled alive from the basement of a collapsed shopping mall, after spending nearly a full week trapped under debris. Even as some international search teams have wrapped up their deployments and departed, Rodríguez pushed back against claims that her government was winding down active search operations.

“We have not closed the search-and-rescue phase. We are still in that stage because, according to our overall assessment, there are still active sites where we believe there may be survivors, even if there is only one,” Rodríguez told reporters at the tense, testy news conference, her first public pushback against widespread criticism of the state-led effort.

The interim leader dismissed growing public anger over the response as “narratives manufactured in propaganda laboratories,” claiming that rescue teams were dispatched immediately with sufficient equipment to affected areas. Her account directly contradicts widespread complaints from local residents, who say they were forced to dig through rubble on their own for the first 48 hours, without access to official rescue teams or heavy machinery to free trapped family members.

“Those propaganda operations, driven by partisan political interests, are despicable,” Rodríguez said. “We did not wait one day, two days or three days. We activated immediately.” She added that 11 international field hospitals, staffed by medical workers from 33 countries, have been deployed to quake-hit regions, and that the government has established a dedicated reconstruction fund to accept private and international donations.

Early damage estimates from the United Nations Development Programme put the total physical destruction from the quakes at $6.7 billion — equal to roughly 6% of Venezuela’s entire annual gross domestic product. This figure does not include the far larger long-term costs of recovery and full reconstruction across La Guaira.

Rodríguez’s public defense comes amid significant political uncertainty both for her administration and the country. A close ally of former Vice President Nicolás Maduro, Rodríguez stepped into the interim presidency in January after Maduro was removed from office and taken into custody by U.S. authorities, with the backing of the Trump administration. In the months since, she has overseen business-friendly reforms to Venezuela’s critical oil sector under U.S. pressure, but has made no meaningful moves to return the country to full democratic rule.

Under Venezuela’s constitution, an interim presidential appointment can only last 90 days for a temporary vacancy, with a single 90-day extension approved by the National Assembly. That 180-day window expired Friday, and government officials have offered no public clarification on what will happen next. The ruling majority-controlled National Assembly could call a snap presidential election if lawmakers formally declare the presidency permanently vacant, but no timeline for a democratic vote has been announced. Prior to the earthquake, the Trump administration stated that an election would only be held once Venezuela’s economy has been sufficiently stabilized.

The political turmoil extends to the country’s fractured opposition. Former President Maduro claimed victory in the 2024 presidential election, which barred leading opposition figure María Corina Machado — a Nobel Peace Prize winner — from running. An independent vote count verified by the opposition confirmed that Machado’s preferred candidate won a majority of the vote. Machado, currently in exile, has pledged to return to Venezuela to support earthquake recovery efforts, but accused Rodríguez’s government of closing the country’s airspace last week to block her planned return. The Trump administration has repeatedly praised Rodríguez’s disaster response, and has largely stepped back from its earlier support for the opposition, abandoning Machado’s claims to the presidency.

On Venezuela’s battered northern Caribbean coast, the coastal state of La Guaira is still reeling from the devastating aftermath of two powerful back-to-back earthquakes that struck on June 24. With the confirmed death toll already climbing past 2,200 and thousands more still unaccounted for, overwhelmed local authorities and grieving families are locked in a desperate race against time to identify victims before mass burials become unavoidable.

The scale of destruction has left even experienced medical and forensic workers unprepared for the scope of loss. For Rosa López, a veteran nurse, nothing could have readied her for the harrowing scene she encountered while helping her daughter track down her missing son-in-law, 25-year-old José Antonio Toledo. As she walked through areas hit by the quakes, she was forced to step around rows of victims’ bodies left exposed under the unforgiving tropical sun, many wrapped only in worn sheets or blankets, their identities still unknown.

Toledo had been working as a security guard in a collapsed building when the tremors hit. Rescuers recovered his body quickly, but overcrowded local hospitals turned the family away, forcing repeated transfers that ultimately left his body held in an open parking lot alongside dozens of other unclaimed victims. A forensic doctor finally helped the family locate him days after the disaster, but a new barrier emerged: the family could not cover the $450 funeral home fee required to claim the body. In a last-minute twist, the mayor’s office offered a free plot at a local cemetery just before midnight, requiring the grieving pair to rush up the cemetery’s hilly terrain within an hour to secure the spot. They buried Toledo that night, saving him from the mass grave that many fear will be the final resting place for hundreds of unclaimed victims. “He was an exemplary person, a boy who liked helping people,” López said of her son-in-law.

For forensic teams working around the clock to process victims, the challenge is unprecedented. Joel Mirabal, a 45-year-old forensic technician who has worked seven straight days since the quakes struck, estimates that only 60 to 70 percent of recovered bodies can be matched to a family member or neighbor willing and able to identify them. With many bodies severely damaged by collapsed debris, identification relies on small, personal markers: a distinct tattoo, a lifelong scar, a piece of familiar clothing. “They don’t look even 10% like what they were in real life,” Mirabal said of the victims.

Unidentified bodies are transferred to a makeshift processing center at the La Guaira seaport, where private companies have donated large refrigerated containers to slow decomposition. Even with that support, the steady flow of newly recovered bodies has outstripped storage capacity, and Mirabal says mass graves are now all but inevitable. “The collapse is massive, and the bodies are buried under many layers of debris,” he explained. Forensic teams anticipate it will take up to three months to recover all the remains trapped in rubble, with thousands of local civilians leading teams to sites where bodies have been spotted. Mirabal, a professional dog trainer who previously worked with the government on drug and missing person searches, says the constant exposure to grief has taken a heavy toll. He finds quiet comfort in his 12 pet dogs waiting for him at home after each 12-hour shift. “It’s not easy at all to witness the suffering and tragedy of your fellow human beings,” he said.

Across the state, families still wait in long lines for a chance to identify their loved ones. Over the weekend, dozens of bodies recovered from flattened buildings were brought to a government health facility in La Guaira, left in a sweltering open parking lot for family members to view. At one point, more than 200 bodies were held in that makeshift staging area. On a recent Thursday, grieving relatives lined up outside the seaport morgue, their cars and funeral home vehicles stretching for blocks down the coastal road.

Among them was Robert Rodríguez, who sat dejected on a concrete block waiting for his daughter to identify the body of her husband, Rafael Alvarado. Alvarado had been working at the deli counter of a local grocery store when the building collapsed around him. The family recovered his body from the rubble on Wednesday, and it was transferred to the seaport morgue the next day. “I saw his shoes and knew it was him,” Rodríguez said, as tears soaked through his blue face mask. He had warned his daughter to prepare for the worst before she entered the morgue. The family plans to cremate Alvarado and scatter his ashes on Isla de Margarita, his beloved hometown island.