At a flattened apartment block known as Los Cocos in northern Venezuela,
civilians toiled with little support to pull the living and the dead from the rubble. In neighbouring Colombia, when residential towers in Cali collapsed, officials poured in to help.
Devastating earthquakes weeks apart in Venezuela and Colombia have exposed sharply different government capacities to respond to disaster, according to witnesses in both countries, aid workers and a security firm. In Venezuela, civilians led rescue efforts after two back-to-back quakes in late June, finding survivors and victims as confusion, lack of equipment and delayed orders stymied the official response.
In Colombia, civilian volunteers were also vital in the first hours after Monday’s quake. But at least a dozen official entities were soon on the ground, coordinating the response in the hardest-hit cities, leading to hundreds of rescues in the crucial 72-hour window after the disaster.
Venezuela’s twin 7.2- and 7.5-magnitude quakes, which struck especially hard in coastal La Guaira, led to a national death toll currently standing at 6,300 people. The Colombia quake, which had a similar magnitude and was felt in neighbouring countries, killed at least 285 people, with some 380 still missing. To be sure, magnitude is not the only factor determining the damage an earthquake will wreak.
In Venezuela, soil instability and the shallowness of the tremors likely contributed to their toll, while the Colombia quake struck much deeper.
However, Venezuela has been battered by shortages, hyperinflation and brain drain for years. The government blames sanctions by the US and other countries, while critics say corruption has sapped state coffers as mismanagement and underinvestment have cratered the country’s top industry, oil.
Venezuela’s interim government has vehemently denied any problems in its response. “We did not wait one, two or three days. We acted immediately,” interim President Delcy Rodriguez told reporters in early July. She said 4,000 officials had been deployed the first day, rising to 14,000 the next, and lashed out at what she called a “media narrative” of a chaotic response.
In La Guaira, most buildings of a landmark 1,100-unit social housing block named after late President Hugo Chavez collapsed in the June quakes. Families, neighbours and some local officials spent weeks digging through rubble with bare hands, buckets, and sticks, helped by international rescue teams and a small contingent of Venezuelan federal officials. Volunteers arriving from other states provided generators, food, water and other supplies.
Locals carried bodies out on old mattresses and other bits of debris until one or two forensic specialists appeared several days afterward with body bags. Locals called for heavy machinery and more official presence at the site, known colloquially as Los Cocos.
A month later, two cranes were operating along with other heavy machinery to remove rubble. Civil protection officials who had tunneled six stories into the rubble needed multiple body bags to contain decaying remains, which they removed with soldiers’ aid.
An army sergeant whose unit was finding and removing bodies said some of the equipment was broken and they were approaching those still searching for family members to assess who needed help.
Things played out differently at Cali’s Torres del Limonar, a five-story residential block in a quiet southern neighbourhood of Colombia’s third-largest city.Neighbours and volunteers who pulled some 20 people from the rubble in the first hours were quickly backed up by local firefighters and then joined by more than a dozen official entities, including police and navy rescuers and search and rescue officials from other cities.
Within two days the site was strictly organised, with volunteers allowed only certain jobs in an effort to avoid overcrowding and let rescuers listen for survivors. A constant rotation of dump trucks removed rubble in the shadow of two cranes.
