Venezuela rescuers in final push to find survivors as families mourn

Rescuers from around the world pushed on Tuesday to save any final survivors trapped under mountains of rubble after Venezuela’s massive quakes that killed over 1,700 people, with tens of thousands still unaccounted for. The twin quakes of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 — the strongest to hit the South American nation in more than a century — likely damaged or destroyed 58,870 buildings, according to a preliminary assessment of satellite data published by Nasa. By the latest official count, some 1,700 are dead and 5,000 are injured, with no governmental word on the number of missing. Other estimates place these in the tens of thousands. At the only public cemetery in the capital Caracas, the two crematory ovens have been working at full capacity. Between Friday and Sunday, 60 to 70 burials were held each day. A cry of “Mom, I love you!” rose above a steady low sobbing and the sound of shovels mixing cement. When workers began to seal the niche of his nephew, Sergio Vergara fell to his knees. He was the one who found him, along with his entire family, in a collapsed building in the hardest-hit state of La Guaira. “It was a horrible experience, pulling him out, his children,” said the 42-year-old man. Five days after the powerful back-to-back quakes flattened entire neighbourhoods, the task of recovering the dead loomed large and hopes of finding survivors faded. Around 50,000 people are still listed as missing, according to the United Nations, which estimates that the disaster generated roughly 1.2 million tonnes of debris in La Guaira state. On Monday, a new 4.6-magnitude tremor rekindled fear among the population. Bodies in warehouse The US military repaired and reopened on Monday the Port of La Guaira, where an AFP correspondent saw a warehouse storing hundreds of unidentified bodies encased in white and black body bags as well as a few coffins. The USS Fort Lauderdale was docked and delivering aid. Dozens of people from the devastated region waited outside the makeshift m