Venezuela earthquakes: Death toll rises to 920, over 50,000 missing

At least 920 people are dead and over 3,000 have been injured after this week’s devastating earthquakes in Venezuela, according to the country’s top lawmaker. Rescuers are racing to reach survivors beneath the rubble before the 'golden' window of time closes. Many displaced families have nowhere to go in Caracas, La Guaira and surrounding areas.

Venezuela was already mired in political and financial crisis. Some residents are calling for civilian volunteers to help clear debris, saying the emergency response is insufficient. Doctors say chronic underfunding left the healthcare system unequipped to treat the surge of patients, report The Guardian and CNN.

The US military is on the ground for rescue efforts in Venezuela — where, earlier this year, special forces conducted a deadly raid to seize then-President Nicolás Maduro. A wave of machinery, supplies and international aid workers is heading toward hard-hit areas.

Meanwhile, Venezuela’s interim president Delcy Rodríguez has vowed to fight to save 'as many people as possible' as the official death toll from the country’s worst earthquake in more than a century almost doubled, but frustration was growing at the perceived sluggishness of the government’s response.

Rodríguez’s brother, Jorge, the president of the national assembly, said on Friday that the official number of dead had risen to 920. Delcy Rodríguez had earlier said almost 3,000 people were injured. Speaking during a tour of La Guaira, the most devastated region, she said foreign search and rescue groups were starting to arrive.

“We offer our solidarity [to families of victims],” Rodríguez said late on Thursday outside the ruins of an eight-floor seafront hotel that had been obliterated by twin 7.2- and 7.5-magnitude quakes.

United Nations aid chief Tom Fletcher told the AFP news agency that more than 50,000 people were missing after two powerful earthquakes struck within a minute of each other on Wednesday evening, flattening buildings in the north of the country.

Volunteer searchers and the relatives of the many missing voiced exasperation and anger at the lack of an official response as they waited for government teams.

Rotny Bombart, a 33-year-old paramedic, said he had spent five hours hunting for his mother, María Eugenia, in a collapsed tower block in La Guaira called OPP 33. “It has 15 floors. Or rather, it used to, because there’s nothing left of it now,” Bombart said after being treated at a public hospital in the capital, Caracas, for a gash to his right arm sustained during the search.

Foreign nationals have been confirmed among the dead, reportedly including 15 of Portuguese nationality or descent, seven Chinese, two Brazilians, five Spaniards and an Italian Venezuelan.

A British search and rescue team has been deployed to Venezuela made up of personnel from fire brigades across the country.

The 68-strong team left RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire along with six search dogs and humanitarian staff.

Britain has also dispatched members of the UK Emergency Medical Team to prepare for a further medical deployment and made £2m ($2.6m) of humanitarian funding available to help respond to the disaster.