It was a sleepless night for many in South Florida's Venezuelan diaspora after two powerful back-to-back earthquakes struck the country.
At least 164 people were killed, with nearly 1,000 injured and many trapped beneath collapsed buildings, after Wednesday evening's 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude earthquakes. They were among the strongest to strike Venezuela in more than a century and could be felt throughout the region.
As rescuers searched for survivors, and the country's acting president appealed for equipment for the operation, Venezuelans in South Florida criticized the government's response — and told WLRN it is evidence of why immigrants in the U.S. need to be protected from deportation back there.
Adelys Ferro, the executive director of the South Florida-based Venezuelan American Caucus, told WLRN it took three hours to hear from her sister and mother who were in a 13-story apartment building in Caracas at the time of the earthquakes.
"They were inside of the apartment when the two earthquakes hit," she said. "The things were moving, falling, and my sister got a cut on her forehead. It's nothing super bad, but because of everything, she was not able to go to an emergency room. Fortunately, one of the neighbors from the building was able to help her to get first aid and she's fine. We are the lucky ones."
Ferro said a media block imposed by the Venezuelan government on its citizens is making communication exceedingly difficult, explaining her family have actually been reaching out to her for news on what's happening in their own country.
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Maria Corina Vegas, a Miami-based attorney and Venezuelan diaspora activist, told WLRN that her family in Caracas and Valencia were left terrified and shaken. She said her relatives fled from a shaking building in Caracas as they watched nearby structures topple around them.
" What everybody described was terrifying," Vegas said. "The destruction and the magnitude of the experience of seeing the buildings collapse, it's overwhelming."
She was particularly concerned about elderly residents, like her great aunt and uncle, and their safety amidst the earthquakes. Although the two of them were safe, she worried that others were not and remained unaccounted for as the death toll kept rising.
Family members also told Vegas that they felt several aftershocks early this morning. She said that people slept outside, feeling unsafe in the buildings as the aftershocks hit.
"There had been about 20 aftershocks, but they were mild," Vegas said. "Everybody was sleeping was outside, even if their building was standing. They stay outside because they don't know if there's gonna be another one."
The natural disaster poses a major challenge for acting President Delcy Rodríguez, the former vice president who took office in January after U.S. capture of former leader Nicolás Maduro. The country has been in economic disarray for over a decade. She said authorities were shifting rescue teams from other parts of the country to La Guaira state, which Rodríguez described as a “disaster zone.”
Rodríguez appealed to businesses to make heavy construction equipment available for rescue operations, adding that search and rescue teams certified by the United Nations were on their way to help.
Dulce Suarez, assistant director of the Academy for International Disaster Preparedness at FIU, fears the death toll will grow dramatically in the coming days. She said the country’s lack of resources, poor infrastructure as well as ongoing embargo limitations will hamper in the recovery efforts and the arrival of aid.
“ In Venezuela, because the conditions are so terrible and they're affecting the entire country,” she said, “the best way to support them is to support those who are already doing the work on the ground, who know what communities need, and they will tell you, ‘We have the hands, we just don't have the resources.””
“The need was already so dire and so great before the earthquake that this is just gonna exacerbate the need even further,” she added.
Suarez said search and rescue teams from the U.S. were flying into the country Thursday morning. “But every second that passes, those lives [are still] under the rubbles and so that's a ticking bomb,” she explained. “So the numbers of the death tolls and the catastrophe is just gonna grow exponentially within the next forty-eight hours.”
TPS and a humanitarian crisis
Ferro said the conditions in the country, and the government's response, show why Venezuelans deserve immigration opportunities like Temporary Protected Status (TPS) from the American government. She said the country is lacking essential medical supplies like gloves and antibiotics.
"If there is a reason for TPS to be created and passed in Congress, it's for this," she said. "Venezuelans cannot go back to this Venezuela."
Vegas also criticized the Trump administration's immigration policies and depriving Venezuelans of TPS, saying the earthquakes' impact looks set to pan out into a humanitarian crisis.
" The purpose of humanitarian parole and the purpose of Temporary Protective Status was precisely intended for these kinds of situations," Vegas said. "This is a humanitarian crisis. The U.S. needs to step up and realize that this is not the moment to continue to deport Venezuelans or to detain them when they go to asylum hearings."
She also worried about humanitarian relief reaching affected people because of these immigration policies, which have deported Venezuelans back to unsafe living conditions, failing to protect them in the first place.
" If you're gonna provide aid, there's two parts to it. Making sure it doesn't end up in the hands of the thugs that have been running the country, and for the Venezuelans that are here that actually fled [that] were given protections, that they not be stripped of those them," Vegas said.
She said that the earthquakes have changed everything for Venezuelans. But she believes in their resilience, even if the road ahead is long.
"Venezuelans are resilient," Vegas said. "I think reconstructing will take a lot of effort on behalf of Venezuelans coming together and the organizations that support that effort."
Additional reporting by the Associated Press.
