As Venezuela responds to earthquake devastation, volunteers take charge

Catia la Mar, Venezuela – Andreina Velasquez looks up at her multistorey apartment block overlooking Catia la Mar, a coastal city in the Venezuelan state of La Guaira. The concrete slabs that once separated each floor are now stacked on top of each other."They fell like a pack of cards," she said, pointing to where she used to live on the sixth floor.Velasquez feels lucky. She left her apartment a couple of hours before a pair of deadly earthquakes shook Venezuela on June 24, reaching magnitudes of 7.2 and 7.5, respectively.She had gone to get a new key cut and was at the beach when the first quake struck.Her neighbours did not make it. She remembers one as a gentle, retired man, another as a woman with a young daughter who had just moved in. They had been overjoyed with their view of the sea.Velasquez is still struggling to process what she has lost. Her state was among the hardest hit by the earthquakes.But despite her grief, she has started to hand out face masks to passersby, hoping to shield them from the gusts of dust drifting from the collapsed buildings and the stench rising from the rubble.“I've been here every day. Other people came to help, but they don't have helmets, they don’t have gloves, they don't have masks. That's why I'm helping," she said.More than 2,295 people have been killed and 11,000 injured in the twin earthquakes, according to Venezuela's National Assembly. The United Nations has warned the death toll could rise to 10,000.As Venezuela continues to confront the destruction, experts say recovery efforts have been driven largely by volunteers and neighbours like Velasquez.Hospitals are overwhelmed, and government aid has been slow to reach some of the worst-affected areas.Carolina Jimenez, the president of the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a research and advocacy group, told Al Jazeera that the result has been growing anger towards the state.“In a government in any other country, the first responder should be the state," she said. "In the case of Venezuela, the state has been the last responder."In places like Catia la Mar, north of Caracas, authorities still haven’t arrived or are lacking.Velasquez and other locals say that help from the federal government only arrived on Sunday — three days after the earthquakes hit the country. In some parts of La Guaira, such assistance has yet to arrive at all."[The] response has come from citizens, from civil society, from humanitarian workers, from volunteers — but not from the government," Jimenez said.