A week after the double seismic event that devastated Venezuela, entire families in Maiquetía and Caracas continue to sleep outdoors, without access to drinking water, without mattresses, and without any authorities arriving to inspect their homes.
The testimonies collected this Wednesday by the opposition organization Vente Venezuela depict a sense of abandonment that the victims themselves describe as complete.
"We need a mattress because we are sleeping on the street, on the street, out of fear that something might happen again. With children and all, we don’t have mattresses. We are sleeping outdoors, with a sheet, with whatever we have. No one has taken us into account," recounted a resident of the El Rincón neighborhood in Maiquetía, La Guaira state.
In the provisional camp of Quebrada Honda, in Caracas, about 200 families face the same urgency. "Right now, what we need the most, and urgently, is water and mattresses," declared one of the victims who remains there.
In the Piedra Azul neighborhood, also in Maiquetía, Andrea Navarro reported that no official has stepped foot in the area to assess the structural damage to streets and homes.
"Nobody has come here to inspect anything. I have not conducted any inspections here yet. Nothing, nothing," he stated. Navarro also pointed out that residents have had to take it upon themselves to obtain food and medication.
In San Bernardino, neighbor Larisa Colmenares described how the iconic Rita Building collapsed before her eyes during the earthquake on Wednesday, June 24.
"We came to support on Los Próceres Avenue when we saw that one of our iconic and beloved buildings, the Rita building, where we had neighbors, collapsed. That was a blow in broad daylight," he recounted.
Colmenares specified that institutional aid took two days to arrive: "The earthquake was on Wednesday, and the mayor's office arrived on Friday." During that time, the neighbors themselves and volunteers from the Andrés Bello Catholic University sustained the rescue efforts.
In addition to the material damage, there is now an additional threat: insecurity. With dozens of buildings evacuated and no nighttime patrols, Colmenares reported that outsiders are entering the empty structures.
"We are afraid, fearful, and we have a report that victims or people living in difficult circumstances, so to speak, are entering the empty buildings," he warned, and demanded: "We request assistance, we are making a public complaint, and we will ask for police support at night."
The abandonment contrasts sharply with the show of force by the regime of Nicolás Maduro: the acting president Delcy Rodríguez mobilized 14,000 military personnel and police after declaring a National State of Emergency on June 24, but the NGO Provea reported that this presence was aimed at maintaining order rather than ensuring essential services.
«We did not observe any state effort to provide food or drinking water,» the organization pointed out, according to a documented complaint this Wednesday.
The official balance as of June 30 reports 1,943 fatalities, over 10,571 injured, and nearly 15,866 affected, while the UN estimates around 50,000 missing persons.
More than 63,000 buildings were damaged throughout the country, with 434 collapsed and 750 suffering severe structural damage, marking the most significant natural disaster in Venezuela's recent history.
Vente Venezuela makes an urgent appeal to the network of civil donors to channel drinking water and mattresses to the provisional camps, in what it describes as a complete lack of state response.
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