Rescue teams with dogs trained to find people under rubble continued yesterday to search for the last survivors after two strong earthquakes in Venezuela.
The death toll has now reached 1,450, with around 3,150 injured, more than 12,700 people homeless and tens of thousands missing, AFP and Reuters reported.
"The death toll has reached 1,450 - men and women who lost their lives in the worst natural disaster in our country's history," said National Assembly Speaker Jorge Rodriguez yesterday. "A total of 774 buildings were damaged or destroyed, with 189 of them completely collapsed", he said.
The United Nations estimates that around 50,000 people are still missing.
Yesterday, almost four days after the twin earthquakes, a man and his teenage son were pulled alive from the rubble in the coastal town of Carabayeda north of Caracas, which was devastated by the disaster, AFP journalists reported. American and French rescue teams pulled the father and son from under a huge pile of rubble.
The country's heavily criticized President Delcy Rodriguez thanked the 24 countries that sent 521 tons of aid, more than 2,700 rescuers and 86 teams with special dogs.
Local residents, outraged by the passive attitude of the military, forced a group of soldiers yesterday to take up picks and shovels and join in clearing the rubble from a collapsed building. "The country needs you. Drop the weapons, drop the bullets!", an indignant man shouted at a soldier in the Tanaguarena (Carabayeda) region of La Guaira state.
"I am outraged by the fact that a general arrived with about twenty armed soldiers and they simply stood against a wall. "We had to remove a dead body, and they stood quietly on the sidelines," volunteer Alexander Mijares, 26, told AFP. "Why didn't they send them in work clothes, with shovels and picks? Why did they bring them with weapons? What kind of war is there here? If they are soldiers, they should defend the state, the nation. And right now we are the ones who have to save people - alive and dead. We have to get them out of there. How can you bring 50 people just to stand in a corner, in their neatly pressed uniforms?" he added.
Later, soldiers began to help clear the debris with shovels.
In the first hours after the earthquake, cases of robbery and theft were recorded, eyewitnesses say. AFP journalists also witnessed looting.
Meanwhile, the US Southern Command for Latin America and the Caribbean said about 100 more air force troops had arrived on the scene to help local authorities deal with the "increasing flow of vital air traffic in and out of the country".
A further 130 marines are expected to arrive in the next 24 hours in the badly damaged northern port of La Guaira, the Southern Command said. Their task will be to "open the port so that much-needed supplies and equipment can arrive by sea to the most affected areas of Venezuela".
The US military has also deployed air assets and helicopters to support the operation.
According to the Southern Command, more than 250 US military personnel have already been sent to Venezuela to help search for survivors.
A power outage yesterday forced Venezuela's largest refinery, "Amuay", with a capacity to process 645,000 barrels of oil per day – to stop work, refinery workers said, quoted by Reuters.
This is the second refinery in the country to be left without electricity after two devastating earthquakes in the past week, the agency noted.
After the tremors, which killed at least 1,450 people, Venezuela is experiencing serious difficulties in providing electricity to industrial plants, refineries, businesses and households.
Before the earthquakes, "Amuay", which is of key importance for the production of fuels for the domestic market, processed about 137,000 barrels of crude oil per day.
A shortage of water for some power plants and industrial plants in the western state of Falcon, including the "Amuay" refinery, is also hampering their work, some workers said.
Other sources reported that the smaller El Palito refinery, with a capacity of 146,000 barrels per day, as well as the neighboring Moron petrochemical complex in the central part of the country, have not yet been able to fully resume operations due to unstable power supplies.
According to Venezuela's oil ministry, the earthquakes have not affected the extraction and export of crude oil, which provides the bulk of the country's revenue. However, production of fuels and petrochemicals for the domestic market may not be enough to meet demand once people return to work after the disaster if refineries and related facilities cannot maintain normal operations.