Venezuela earthquake deaths near 1,400

The death toll from Venezuela’s devastating twin earthquakes rose above 1,400 on Saturday as foreign rescue teams poured into the country and authorities pressed on with the search for survivors in the hardest-hit coastal areas.

Facing public outrage at the response by local officials, US-backed interim Venezuelan leader Delcy Rodriguez said the country was “not alone.”

The United States said one runway at Simon Bolivar International Airport was now functioning and that C-17 US military planes were landing there, while a naval ship had arrived off the coast.

The UN humanitarian agency OCHA said search-and-rescue teams from at least 17 countries were being mobilized to help find survivors.

But the search for survivors saw desperate attempts by local residents to claw away rubble from apartment buildings that collapsed in Wednesday’s double-quakes. Experts say the first 72 hours after natural disasters are the key, narrow window for finding the living.

There was joy in the hardest-hit coastal area of La Guaira, north of Caracas, when locals pulled an infant alive out of the wreckage on Friday, some 32 hours after the magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 tremors.

In one social media video, a man welled up in tears up as he held the baby in his arms.

The death toll from the quakes, that struck within a minute of each other, had reached 920, with the United Nations’ aid chief Tom Fletcher warning AFP the figure could rocket.

The UN migration agency said it had examined available population and damage data and had determined that “up to 6.76 million people could be affected,” and would “require emergency shelter, safe water, sanitation and hygiene services, healthcare, protection support and essential relief items.”

‘No help’

Venezuelans -- already battered by years of a failing economy and the turbulence of the US intervention to topple leader Nicolas Maduro in January -- were furious at the government.

Yessica Mendoza was forced to transport her own daughter to a morgue in Caracas after 25-year-old Yesimar Rodriguez and her husband Jhomel Anaya, 26, did not survive the tumbling debris of their home in La Guaira on Wednesday.

“We were the ones who pulled them out ourselves. No help ever came,” the bereaved mother, 43, told AFP, adding that the couple would be cremated without a wake due to the rapidly advancing decomposition of their bodies.

Some Caracas residents jeered Rodriguez as she visited a destroyed neighborhood on Friday.