Venezuela and Colombia responded differently to the aftermath of the earthquakes
Earthquakes that struck Venezuela and Colombia just a few weeks apart highlighted differences in how rescue operations were organized. In Venezuela, following two earthquakes in late June, local residents largely searched for people trapped under the rubble on their own, while in Cali, Colombia, government agencies quickly joined the rescue effort, according to NDTV World.
In Venezuela, earthquakes measuring 7.2 and 7.5 on the Richter scale hit the coastal city of La Guaira the hardest. According to data cited in the report, the death toll in the country reached 6,300. In the Los Cocos housing complex, where most of the 1,100-unit public housing buildings collapsed, relatives, neighbors, and local officials spent weeks clearing the rubble by hand, using buckets and sticks.
Local residents called for more heavy equipment and a greater presence of government officials. The bodies of the deceased were carried out on old mattresses and amid the rubble, and one or two forensic specialists with body bags arrived several days later. Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, rejected accusations of a slow response and stated that on the first day, the authorities mobilized 4,000 personnel, and 14,000 the following day.
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Thomas Michael Carvalho, a representative of the private security company Global Guardian, said that at the start of the operation, his employees did not have access to heavy equipment, and the main burden of search and rescue fell on civilians.
In Colombia, an earthquake of similar magnitude claimed at least 285 lives, with another 380 people still listed as missing. In the five-story Torres del Limonar apartment building in Cali, neighbors and volunteers pulled approximately 20 people from the rubble in the first few hours. They were soon joined by firefighters, police, Navy rescue teams, and search teams from other cities. Over the course of two days, the site of the collapse was cleared, and the rubble was hauled away by trucks using two cranes. Humanitarian workers praised the local coordination efforts in Colombia but expressed concern about the situation in remote areas, particularly in the Pacific province of Chocó, where 13 people died.
