Devastation, agony and hope: What we saw in Venezuela after the earthquakes

▶ Watch Video: Rescue workers save security guard from Venezuela rubble

The stench in the coastal Venezuelan community of La Guaira is an impossible one to forget, even nearly a week after returning to the United States. It was an overwhelming combination of debris, smoke and death.

The twin earthquakes that rocked Venezuela within a minute late last month led to catastrophic levels of destruction, leveling entire areas in La Guaira, a city once known for its port and beaches but that resembled a war zone during our visits. The quakes also caused tremendous human loss, killing and injuring thousands of Venezuelans, leading to tens of thousands of reported disappearances and displacing many others.

We saw residents of La Guaira use their hands to lift debris and materials in apartment buildings that had pancaked down, trapping many inside. Alongside rescue workers, they desperately searched for any signs of life. The noise from shovels, jackhammers and other machinery was interrupted sporadically when rescuers asked for silence in the hopes of detecting tapping or movements by those trapped in the rubble.

To this day, an unknown number of bodies remain buried in the piles of rubble scattered across La Guaira, where the destruction caused by the quakes was concentrated. The official death tally, which stands at nearly 4,000 people, will almost certainly continue climbing. At one point, the United Nations estimated more than 50,000 Venezuelans were missing. The search-and-rescue operation we saw, undertaken by rescuers from across the globe, including U.S. teams, has largely given way to recovery efforts.

CBS News was the first American broadcast network to report from La Guaira, starting our coverage there two days after the June 24 quakes. We had to fly to Panama City, where we boarded a flight to a small airport in Valencia, Venezuela’s third-largest city, because the country’s main airport near Caracas was badly damaged by the quakes.

During the weeklong reporting trip, we drove to La Guaira nearly every single day. In normal times, the drive there from Caracas takes roughly half an hour. But our first trip to La Guaira took hours, as Venezuelans flooded the highway to deliver water, food and other supplies to those affected by the earthquakes. We barely made it in time to file our report for “CBS Evening News” that Friday. The following trips were shorter and less chaotic, after Venezuelan authorities restricted entry into La Guaira. To our surprise, we were never barred from traveling there to report on the devastation.

The potent smell in La Guaira is not the only thing that is difficult to forget. Etched in my mind is the incalculable human suffering we witnessed there. We met and spoke to Venezuelans who had lost their children, siblings and other relatives, including a mother who miraculously survived her building’s collapse. Her 12-year-old son did not.

Outside a hospital in Caracas, where we saw desperate families scouring patient lists in search of their loved ones, we met a woman who was bringing soup to her 6-year-old nephew, who had been hospitalized. While he survived, his mother, the woman’s sister, did not. In the outskirts of La Guaira, we interviewed a Venezuelan firefighter who, lacking heavy machinery, was unable to retrieve bodies from a collapsed building so the victims’ loved ones could bury them. 

In a camp for people displaced by the earthquakes, we met a grandmother and mother who had lost her home in La Guaira. Inside the tent where she slept with her son, she begged for help and a permanent home, calling her situation a “nightmare.” We saw scores of tents inside the camp, a relatively organized operation inside a public park in Caracas.

But amid the utter devastation, mass destruction and suffocating despair, we also saw glimpses of hope. In the tent camp, we saw children playing soccer, seemingly detached from the tragic circumstances that had displaced their families.

Outside what used to be a McDonald’s restaurant in La Guaira, volunteer veterinarians set up a makeshift animal clinic for dogs, cats and other pets injured or left ownerless by the back-to-back earthquakes. With few tools but an admirable drive to save animals, they described their work as “war medicine.”

Despite the Venezuelan government’s efforts to vilify the U.S. in recent decades, we found Venezuelans who welcomed — and in some cases, desperately asked for – American assistance. The earthquakes occurred roughly six months after the American military seized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro so he could face criminal charges in the U.S., leaving in place his vice president, who has since worked closely with the Trump administration. 

The U.S. search and rescue team included three-year-old Zilla, one of 23 highly trained American canines deployed to Venezuela. We saw him scour buildings, sniffing for signs of life, a few days after he found a family of three trapped in the rubble. The father had died, but his wife and their young son were rescued alive.

We also saw rescue teams from several dozen other countries on the ground in Venezuela, both official delegations and volunteer groups. We met rescuers from Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, France, Mexico, Portugal, Vietnam and other nations. We saw them work alongside residents of La Guaira to look for their neighbors and loved ones.

In fact, it was a team of rescuers from several countries, mainly El Salvador, Chile, Costa Rica, Portugal and the U.S., who saved Hernan Gil Flores, a security guard who was trapped inside a building, beneath tons of concrete, for eight days.

“It’s a total miracle,” his wife told us outside of that building. “It is something inexplicable.”