Volunteers and international teams comb rubble in Venezuela’s La Guaira after twin earthquakes

A week after twin earthquakes struck Venezuela’s northern coast, rescuers in the coastal state of La Guaira continued searching collapsed buildings for survivors, navigating what local volunteers described as a landscape of shattered concrete, broken streets, and unstable structures. The work drew thousands of volunteers and additional teams from abroad, as families in heavily damaged beachside neighborhoods waited for word on people trapped beneath rubble.

Israel Rivas, a 24-year-old mechanic and aspiring photographer from San Félix, traveled roughly 12 hours to the worst-hit area after deciding to respond once the scale of the disaster became clear. He boarded a bus for La Guaira, leaving behind savings meant for a camera lens, and arrived near the coastal neighborhoods where buildings were visibly damaged and debris piled high along the streets. He told reporters that he could not sleep or eat well while knowing families across Venezuela were dying, and that he came to “do the best I can.”

On Wednesday, exactly a week after the earthquakes, Rivas stood outside Residencia La Gabarra, a 12-storey apartment block by the beach that had collapsed into a jumble of reinforced concrete and bricks. He described confronting the realities of the site, where he said at least three children were believed to be inside the collapsed structure. The case underscored the urgency of search efforts in the hours and days after the initial shaking, while also highlighting the difficulty of access and recovery work in high-rise collapses.

In Caraballeda, a resort town east of La Guaira’s capital, Rivas said he encountered a group of British search-and-rescue workers who had flown in from Merseyside, the West Midlands, and Wales. He said he offered his help, and the team told him they needed him. Because he is fluent in English, Rivas began working as an interpreter for the UK’s International Search and Rescue team, supporting coordination between local site conditions and the visiting crew’s technical procedures.

Rivas described the work as physically and emotionally demanding, including the difficulty of operating around remains and the limits of what rescuers can recover without appropriate equipment. He said it was hard to see large numbers of dead people and hard to tell families that bodies could not be recovered because they were too far below in a structure that could not be accessed safely with the resources at hand. His account reflected a broader challenge faced by rescue teams in collapsed buildings, where time-sensitive searches often extend into a longer period of recovery when equipment and structural access are constrained.

As the search progressed beyond the first week, the presence of both local volunteers and international crews illustrated how the response has relied on cross-border coordination. Teams continued to move through devastated blocks and attempt to locate signs of life while also confronting risks at damaged sites, including unstable structures and restricted access to deeper layers of debris. For families in La Guaira, the ongoing work remained focused on locating survivors, even as recovery operations at heavily collapsed high-rises increasingly demanded specialized tools and coordination among multiple groups.

Rivas’s role also pointed to a practical need that often emerges in international assistance: bridging language and communications so that teams can coordinate tasks, interpret instructions, and work effectively on the ground. For foreign rescuers, local interpreters can be critical for safety briefings and for accurate reporting from site assessments, particularly in areas where infrastructure is damaged and direct communication is difficult. The effort in La Guaira continued to depend on that coordination and on the sustained participation of volunteers as the search timeframe extended.