0
0
0
As of July 6, the death toll in Venezuela reached 3,535, with 16,740 people sustaining injuries as well as 17,854 individuals displaced without housing due to the earthquakes, according to the country’s official counts.
And while geoscientists said the earthquakes were intense, they were also expected. They say the country was overdue for an earthquake as the movement along the active fault lines in Venezuela has a cycle of about 50 to 60 years between major events.
In the early hours following the earthquake, citizens were seen pulling their neighbors and relatives out of the rubble and working alongside foreign disaster relief teams to find missing people. Displaced and migrant communities of Venezuelans in the United States also organized collection centers to ship donations, collecting everything from batteries and face masks to sanitary pads and new clothes to ship to La Guaira.
“We cannot hide the responsibility of the state at this time; the state must act because that is its duty. When citizens take on these tasks, something is wrong. We must not get used to this,” said Antonio Machado Allison, a first responder for the Venezuelan Red Cross Relief Brigade and an ecologist affiliated with Wesleyan University.
🔗 Read more on our website, linked in our bio
✍️ @avrilsilva03
📸 Getty Images
