The death toll from the earthquakes in Venezuela has risen to at least 1,430 people, the President of the country’s National Assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, said on Saturday.
CNN reports that Rodríguez also disclosed that at least 3,238 people have been injured, and 3,142 families have lost their homes.
The lawmaker added that the country had experienced at least 430 aftershocks in the wake of the two main earthquakes.
The twin, magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 quakes, hit the South American country on Wednesday, devastating the coastal area around La Guaira.
With a scarcity of government rescue teams, Venezuelans have become desperate in the hardest-hit areas, digging through rubble with their hands, while aid agencies warned that the critical 72-hour survival window was closing fast.
CNN further reports that a senior official in the administration of President Donald Trump said there are “great communications right now with the interim authorities” in Venezuela on both the political and military side in the wake of the devastating earthquakes.
“We have a unique relationship, obviously, with the interim authorities, and we’re working very closely with them to address the needs, to get the logistics up and running,” the official told reporters on Saturday morning.
The official said as of Saturday morning, one of the runways at Simón Bolívar International Airport near Caracas was operational, allowing an increase in assistance, and credited this to US coordination with the interim Venezuelan government. The other runway remains “completely cracked and inoperable,” they noted.
“Mobile hospitals are arriving today, the US is working to get more Starlink terminals to Venezuela, and a further surge of humanitarian supplies is planned, the official said. Two 80-person US search and rescue teams have helped find survivors in the rubble,” they added.
Asked about reports of restricted access to some of the hardest hit areas, the official suggested it was a communication issue that “a big coordination problem has obviously been the airfields.”
“You’ve got a lot of different groups from all around the world trying to land at the same airfield, you know, trying to get a picture of what air assets are open, trying to get limited ground logistics to get over there, so that’s something that you deal with in every single one of these situations,” they said.
The official also said the USS Fort Lauderdale “is now in position, and so we’re able to airlift people to use the medical facilities as necessary on that vessel, and to use it to do command and control on logistics, and to use their airlift.”
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