Venezuela death toll doubles as interim president vows to save ‘as many people as possible’

Delcy Rodríguez (far right) visited La Guaira, the most devastated region. Photograph: Venezuelan presidency/AFP/Getty View image in fullscreen Delcy Rodríguez (far right) visited La Guaira, the most devastated region. Photograph: Venezuelan presidency/AFP/Getty Venezuela death toll doubles as interim president vows to save ‘as many people as possible’ Delcy Rodríguez says foreign rescue teams are arriving but people are angry at official response and limited resources Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez , has vowed to fight to save “as many people as possible” as the official death toll from the country’s worst earthquake in more than a century almost doubled, but frustration was growing at the perceived sluggishness of the government’s response. Rodríguez said on Friday that the official death toll had risen to 589, with nearly 3,000 people injured. Speaking during a tour of La Guaira , the most devastated region, Rodríguez said foreign search and rescue groups were starting to arrive. “We offer our solidarity [to families of victims],” she said late on Thursday outside the ruins of an eight-floor seafront hotel that had been obliterated by twin 7.2- and 7.5-magnitude quakes. Volunteer searchers and the relatives of the many missing voiced exasperation and anger at the lack of an official response as they waited for government teams. View image in fullscreen People walk amid rubble after the twin earthquake in Caraballeda, La Guaira state, about 40km northeast of Caracas. Photograph: Federico Parra/AFP/Getty Rotny Bombart, a 33-year-old paramedic, said he had spent five hours hunting for his mother, María Eugenia, in a collapsed tower block in La Guaira called OPP 33. “It has 15 floors. Or rather, it used to, because there’s nothing left of it now,” Bombart said after being treated at a public hospital in the capital, Caracas, for a gash to his right arm sustained during the search. Bombart said that at first no government emergency workers had appeared at the scene. In their absence, desperate locals seized the initiative, picking their way through the rubble with bare hands and basic tools. “You’re prepared for emergencies, but not for this. Nothing prepares you for this,” he said, recalling seeing dismembered bodies, dead people and children in the wreckage. 1:05 Aerial footage shows scale of destruction after deadly earthquakes in Venezuela – video Another searcher, Diego González, said he had spent hours digging his 34-year-old cousin, Helari Rodríguez, out of the debris of Residencias Belo Horizonte, an apartment building in the seaside town of Catia La Mar. “It took us four hours to pull her out of the rubble with the help of some friends,” he said. “People are working with their bare hands. Tools are essential. But Catia La Mar is destroyed – very few buildings will have survived.” Earthquake map On Thursday, the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, said that on Donald Trump’s orders he had mobilised troops to “support the Ven