The smell of death lingers in Venezuela’s ruined streets as overwhelmed hospitals race to save lives

By Max Saltman, Isa Soares, Madelena Araujo, Mary Triny Mena, CNN

Caracas, Venezuela (CNN) — Venezuela was broken long before two back-to-back earthquakes ripped the country from its foundations last Wednesday. The effects of more than a decade of government mismanagement and economic sanctions are clear at Dr. José Manuel de Los Ríos Children’s Hospital in Caracas, where Dr. Huníades Urbina-Medina can treat only four children at a time in the intensive care unit.

“We (once) could receive up to 10 patients” in the ICU, Urbina-Medina said. “But since at least 10 years ago, we don’t have enough personnel, we don’t have enough medicines, we don’t have enough mechanical ventilators.”

One of the four patients receiving treatment is a 12-year-old girl who was crushed under several floors of a collapsed building. She is in agony, with numerous life-threatening injuries.

Roughly 100 children have been treated elsewhere in the hospital since last week, a fraction of those injured in the earthquakes. The Venezuelan government has updated the casualty toll from the earthquakes only incrementally. Currently it stands at more than 1,700 dead and over 5,000 injured.

But the US Geological Survey has said there is a high chance that the magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 earthquakes have killed tens of thousands of people. We may never learn the true count; when a similar tragedy struck the state of La Guaira in 1999, the government never released an official death toll.

The government has extended school closures, and preliminary information suggests that 432 schools in Caracas alone have been damaged. Undamaged schools are among the buildings being used as temporary shelters for the thousands of displaced people.

Urbina-Medina told CNN that no hospital in Venezuela was ready for an emergency as huge as the double earthquakes last week.

“No hospital in Venezuela is prepared for the day-by-day,” Urbana-Medina said. “But with this catastrophe, it’s worse because we don’t have enough medicines, personnel, equipment here in Venezuela.”

Before the earthquakes, the government generally defended its national health system as robust, blaming shortcomings on sanctions imposed by the United States.

Other doctors who spoke with CNN had similar complaints. Many hospitals are damaged, said Dr. Andrés Cortiz, a volunteer with Healing Venezuela, a British charity that provides free medical care in the country. Cortiz said eight hospitals in Caracas have been forced to close, and the remaining hospitals are overwhelmed with patients and lack basic cleaning supplies such as bleach and disinfectant.

Other problems predate the earthquake. As Venezuela has sunk further into crisis over the past decade due to mismanagement by the socialist government and punishing US economic sanctions, Urbana-Medina has seen many qualified medical staff leave the country in search of better opportunities abroad. The same brain-drain has affected Venezuelan schools, which suffered serious teacher shortages before the earthquake.

Other medical personnel have been forced to leave more recently. Soon after then-President Nicolás Maduro was captured by the US in January, Venezuela ended Cuba’s long-standing medical mission in the country, cutting off a key resource in underserved communities.

Holding onto hope

It took 24 hours after the two earthquakes for the smell of death to seep from the ruins in Caracas. The stench of decay now hangs around collapsed buildings throughout the city. It is overpowering but does not deter the families of those still trapped under the rubble. Many have camped out along the edge of the piles of crushed concrete and rebar, awaiting any word of their relatives.

Mirella Herrera is among them. She has waited every day outside her son’s destroyed apartment building, looking for any sign of him, his wife and their children.

“It’s maddening,” she said, weeping. “In the same way that I feel desperate and anguished, I walk, I stay hydrated, and I wonder how must they be. If they’re still alive, they must be desperate to get out of there.”

A white board near the scene has a schematic of the building and its eight stories. Family names are written on each floor. It also tallies the dead, the rescued and the missing. Twelve people in the building have died so far; three have been rescued, and 20 remain within the ruins. In the past two days, not one has been found.

Generally, after a disaster like this, the three days afterward are the “golden” window for finding survivors. Human beings can usually survive for only three days without water. Five days after the earthquakes, Herrera said she is still holding onto hope.

“I feel that my son is strong,” she said. “I feel that he’s waiting for me, that he knows that I’m here watching him. For that reason, I don’t want to give up.”

Waiting for the green light

Early Monday morning, Venezuela awoke to another earthquake. It was small, an aftershock registering a magnitude of 4.9, but it was significant enough to send people out of their homes and temporary shelters and into the streets in their pajamas.

The government was quick to say that the aftershock caused no damage, but it was little comfort. Even those whose homes weren’t destroyed last week are unable to return. Cracks snake up the sides of many buildings left standing. Also on the sides of many buildings are posters of former presidents Maduro and Hugo Chávez, a reminder of who built some of the poorly constructed housing that collapsed.

Soledad Campos Aparicio, 78, held her dog tight as she waited outside her apartment building in Caracas on Monday. The building next to hers, an apartment complex called The Petunia, had collapsed in the earthquakes, and now authorities were not letting her or her neighbors go home. Heavy machinery surrounded the site, with rescue workers clearing debris.

Some municipalities are using a “traffic light” code to convey how damaged a standing building is. Green means habitable, yellow means moderately damaged, and red signifies that the building is unsafe.

“We go in and out, but they won’t let us stay,” Campos Aparicio told CNN. She wants to go back to her apartment badly. “I fell, I fainted, and I injured my knees. I’ve been unwell, but I’m on my own.”

Isa Soares, Madalena Araujo and Mary Triny Mena reported from Caracas.

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