A three-year-old boy has been pulled from the rubble in Venezuela six days after back-to-back earthquakes flattened hundreds of buildings, as the death toll passed 2,200 and the UN warned that tens of thousands were urgently in need of food and shelter.
Video footage released by Jordanian rescue workers shows them cheering as they extract Klieber Morán from the wreckage of the Los Corales Garden 1 building in La Guaira state, the worst-hit area. The child was given first aid at the scene, taken to hospital and his vital signs were good, the Jordanian civil defence said. He was being treated in the capital Caracas, according to Venezuelan Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez.
“Boy, 3, rescued from rubble six days after Venezuela earthquakes as death toll passes 2,200.”
Interim President Delcy Rodríguez described the rescue as a “source of hope for our people”, but the grim reality of the disaster is mounting. The death toll has risen to more than 2,200, according to the president of the National Assembly, with over 10,000 injured and tens of thousands unaccounted for. Nasa’s initial assessment of satellite data indicated that 58,870 buildings were probably damaged or destroyed. The UN has ordered 10,000 body bags as the number of dead is expected to increase further.
The rescue of Klieber comes well after the critical 72-hour window during which trapped people have the highest chance of survival. Many local residents, frustrated by the government’s response, have taken rescue efforts into their own hands, searching through debris with bare hands and pickaxes.
“We could hear the screams and shouts of people trapped under the rubble. So we tried to help them ourselves, using our bare hands, clawing through the debris with our nails,” Juan Avendo, 60, told the BBC. Another local, William Rodrigues, searching for his uncle, said: “We cannot just stand by idly when there’s the possibility that there might be people alive under the rubble. Help arrived very late in most places, and in some, it has still not arrived.”
The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) warned that food shortages were widespread in La Guaira, basic services had broken down and communications had been largely severed. “Community tensions are rising as access to assistance remains constrained,” the UNHCR said. Daniela Armas, an 18-year-old vendor injured in the quake, told AFP that some supplies were being distributed “but sometimes people nearly kill each other for food… it’s like a cockfight.”
The UNHCR said it needed an initial $15m to provide protection, relief items and temporary shelter for 30,000 people over six months. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization warned that health services were under extreme pressure. “There’s an increased risk now of outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles and diphtheria due to low vaccination coverage,” said WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier.
The rescue of Klieber was the only person reported found alive on the sixth day of search efforts. Earlier, a 12-year-old boy was pulled from rubble five days after the quakes, and a mother and her 18-day-old baby were rescued by international teams.