Yamirez Jiménez was still grieving for his father, who died three days earlier, when the earthquake trapped his 19-year-old son in the rubble of a seven-story apartment building in La Guaira, one of the worst-hit coastal regions of Venezuela.
“He is under the floorboards, but there are no machines to rescue him,” Jimenez told Reuters.
She was not alone in saying official aid was slow to arrive. In Caracas, Dayana Delgado, a mother of three, asked where the heavy machinery promised by the government was and pointed out that her neighbors were doing the digging. “I want to know where the child is, whether he is locked up or in a shelter,” she told The Associated Press about the missing 8-year-old.
In Valencia, families were stranded on the streets and unable to return home.
“I saw a lot of families crying on the streets with suitcases and children,” resident Dariana Zambrano Vivas told CNN’s Elex Michaelson.
“They couldn’t go back into their homes. They’re still outside on the street waiting for something to happen.”
Across La Guaira, volunteers plowed through the wreckage with their bare hands as families waited to hear from missing relatives. Juan Alberto Mendaño, a retired school teacher, climbed through the rubble and passed the bodies, where he spotted a woman gesturing for help, the Associated Press reported.
“When we heard the screams, there was nothing we could do,” he said.
