At least 1,719 dead in Venezuela twin earthquakes as hope fades of finding survivors

The death toll from the devastating earthquakes that struck Venezuela five days ago has risen to at least 1,719, National Assembly president Jorge Rodriguez said on Monday. Rodriguez added that 5,034 people were injured in the quakes, which left tens of thousands of people missing. Hopes of finding survivors more than four days after the powerful twin earthquakes were fading, as residents grew increasingly frustrated with the government’s response to the disaster. French and American rescue teams found a man and his teen son alive under the rubble on Sunday in Caraballeda, a town about 40 kilometres north of Caracas, AFP journalists saw. The rescue offered a glimmer of hope in an ongoing tragedy that has shaken a country already mired in an economic crisis, but tens of thousands of people were still unaccounted for as the critical 72-hour window for rescuing trapped victims passed. Millions more people were feared to lack sanitation and other basic needs after one of Latin America’s most devastating earthquake disasters. Some 774 buildings were badly damaged in back-to-back quakes of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 that struck on Wednesday evening, including 189 buildings that have totally collapsed, National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez said on Sunday. In the coastal town of Tucacas, rescuers were digging for people trapped in the pancaked layers and rubble of a collapsed building complex. Luis Salas, 27, who joined the rescue efforts, told AFP that “the hardest part was when we felt hope in the tunnels we went into — crawling, clearing debris, working with all our heart, with great faith — and when we reached our targets, we found them lifeless.” Experts say the first 72 hours after natural disasters define the narrow window for rescuing the living. After that the search usually becomes one of recovering bodies. In the capital’s San Bernardino neighborhood, volunteers clambered over a collapsed building, using drills to break up concrete and forming lines to remove ru