Add the Gazzetta del Sud as a source
The road is divided in two. Literally. The earthquake five days ago opened up the asphalt, leaving deep cracks on the seafront invaded by debris from the hundreds of buildings that collapsed to the ground. From a quiet seaside town, La Guaira has transformed into the symbol of the Venezuelan tragedy. What remains of the condominiums and hotels, with names that evoke the quiet of the waves and Caribbean paradises, are the destroyed signs or, in the worst case scenario, piles of steel and masonry. But now, to complicate a situation that is becoming more desperate day by day, the jackal alarm is also being raised.
Just as the zamuri – Venezuela’s typical birds of prey – feast on roadside rubbish, criminals dig through the rubble, looting everything from clothes to safes. “They often pass themselves off as volunteers or rescuers, so they can enter the cordoned off areas – they say in the city – They are not only active at night, where walking around is very dangerous, but also during the day, in broad daylight”.
The main target is obviously the poorest neighborhoods, where residents do not have the possibility of hiring private guards. And so they themselves guard what remains of their homes, sitting on makeshift chairs waiting for someone to come and help them. “A few days ago some people came here on motorbikes and entered our homes – says a lady in Catia La Mar, one of the most affected areas of the city -. When we approached we found them even trying on some clothes found inside the apartments. I wonder how it is possible to take advantage of a similar tragedy to obtain personal gains”. The shops destroyed or damaged by the earthquake are also in the sights of looters. Along the street they are all closed, but outside it is not uncommon to encounter armed security officers.
Five days after the calamity that devastated Venezuela, La Guaira finds itself facing one of the country’s greatest tragedies. What is considered the ‘Caracas sea’, where citizens often had their second home, has turned into a ghost town, where we go from the ghostly silence of the areas already controlled to the din of cranes and blowtorches in the areas still under scrutiny. The streets are piles of debris, apartment buildings collapsed on top of each other, others on top of themselves ‘like pancakes’, as the rescuers describe them. The streets or squares are invaded by the tents of displaced people, while the skeletons of the buildings bring to light the last moments of a past life, among football-shaped balloons and identical rooms of a luxury hotel. The swimming pool of a hotel is completely on its side, suspended over the abyss of the mountain, while at the yachting club on the sea the only thing still intact are the boats anchored to the pier.
With every hour that passes, the hope of finding someone alive grows less and less. But, as AFP journalists report in Caraballeda, almost four days after the earthquake, a man and his teenage son were pulled from the rubble. The men of the American and French rescue teams lowered the young man and his father, both naked on stretchers, surrounded by dozens of people from the pile of rubble.
By now, it is the thought shared by those who continue to work tirelessly among the rubble, we must deal with reality and resign ourselves to the worst. But the teams, who have come from all over the world, continue to dig, continue to carry out inspections in hundreds and hundreds of buildings. Among them also the Italian mission, with the USAR fire brigade team and the Civil Protection team with doctors and health workers from all over Italy.
And while the dust invades the streets, there are those who try to recover the last personal objects and those who, instead, sit on a motorbike, carry a pink toy airplane under their arms, to alleviate, perhaps, the pain of their daughter who escaped the tragedy.
Italian firefighters identify three people alive in La Guaira
The Italian firefighters are working on the report of a woman with two of her three children still alive in a collapsed building in Macuto, a town in the state of La Guaira, the area of Venezuela most affected by the earthquake. The firefighters are now inside the structure to detect signs of life of the three people. According to what we learn, the 30-year-old woman communicated with the outside through some WhatsApp messages in which she said she was stuck inside with two of her three children.