Venezuela has begun tearing down unstable buildings after its deadly earthquakes. But what is the cost to survivors?
xwhatsapp-strokecopylinkgoogleAdd Al Jazeera on GoogleinfoLa Guaira, Venezuela – Glenda Viloria does not remember the exact number of children’s bodies she has seen in the past few weeks at the morgue in La Guaira, Venezuela. But she remembers their faces — at least those that were still recognisable.
So far, Viloria has recovered the bodies of six family members, including her mother and sister. They lived in OPPE 27, a high-rise government housing complex in the coastal town of Caraballeda.
The four apartment blocks that comprised OPPE 27 were among the nearly 190 buildings that collapsed on June 24, when a pair of twin earthquakes struck Venezuela. Hundreds of other structures were damaged, without hope of repair.
Six weeks later, efforts are ongoing to clear the destruction. On July 30, Venezuela demolished a tower in a housing complex in Catia La Mar, La Guaira, after experts declared it at risk of collapse.
It was the first building to be brought down in a controlled explosion, with more demolitions expected.
But the decision to level buildings and clear wreckage has been controversial, particularly for survivors like Viloria, still searching for the bodies of their loved ones. Viloria remains determined to find her late sister's toddler.
"I promised I was not going to rest until I found her son, Mateo,” she said.
Until last year, Viloria had also lived in OPPE 27, and she loved Mateo as if he were her own child. Even after moving away, she returned regularly to take care of him. "We were a very beautiful and close-knit family," she explained.
Viloria sleeps in a small tent next to the site that was once OPPE 27. Heavy-duty excavators have rumbled past in recent weeks, clearing piles of crushed concrete and twisted metal.
The push to clear the site has left Viloria with difficult decisions. When she and other volunteers found her mother’s body, it was trapped beneath concrete columns inside a narrow tunnel they could barely access.
"I had to give the order for my mother’s body to be cut apart. They had to do it with a saw. The body was already decomposing and was about to burst," she said. "This is something I truly can never forget."
Now, all that remains of her family's building is a patch of dusty ground. There is no physical trace of the home where they once lived. Still, Viloria said she cannot leave.
"I am not going to rest," she said. "Because that boy was like a son to me."
Glenda Viloria walks through the remains of OPPE 27, a housing project that saw its four towers collapse during the June 24 earthquakes [Catherine Ellis/Al Jazeera]Glenda Viloria walks through the remains of OPPE 27, a housing project that saw its four towers collapse during the June 24 earthquakes [Catherine Ellis/Al Jazeera]An emptier La Guaira
Along parts of La Guaira, a state known for its beaches and hotels, the disaster zone has grown quieter.
The crowds that gathered in the aftermath of the earthquakes have thinned. Survivors have moved to shelters, international rescue teams have departed, and aid deliveries have slowed.
Froylan Gerardo Robles, the president of Search and Rescue Mexico, a civil society organisation specialising in disaster response, has noticed the increasingly empty landscape.
His team arrived in La Guaira immediately after the earthquakes and returned in late July to continue work.
"On the first mission, it was like walking into a horror movie from the moment we came here," Robles told Al Jazeera. "But this week, we went out with another rescue team to look at another site, and there isn't even a building there any more."
As of Monday, the Venezuelan government has reported at least 6,125 killed in the earthquakes.
That statistic, however, is believed to be an undercount. The missing are still numbered in the thousands, according to crowdsourcing websites.
Recovering bodies is now the main concern for Robles and his team. When state civil protection teams end their work in the evening, his rescue team continues the search through the night, alongside families and volunteers.
"When machinery reaches a concrete slab, it is lifted carefully while teams check underneath for bodies," Robles said.
"Once we think a body has been located, the operation stops. Then, everything is done completely by hand. A team wearing full personal protective equipment goes in to recover and extract it."
That process was under way on a stifling August afternoon when Al Jazeera visited OPPE 33, another government housing project.
A wooden stick and red blanket marked the site where a decomposed body had been found. Two men wearing masks and white forensic suits carried the remains to a makeshift hut for identification.
Froylan Gerardo Robles, the president of Search and Rescue Mexico, says the landscape of La Guaira has changed [Catherine Ellis/Al Jazeera]Froylan Gerardo Robles, the president of Search and Rescue Mexico, says the landscape of La Guaira has changed [Catherine Ellis/Al Jazeera]Demolition and rebuilding
Levelling unsafe buildings and clearing wreckage can be a fraught process for rescue workers like Robles. But he explained that demolition is sometimes the only way to reach inaccessible areas.
"There are many buildings with critical structural weaknesses that will have to be demolished with explosives. Every situation is different," Robles said.
"There simply isn’t the human capacity with a machine to reach the twelfth floor and start bringing it down from the top."
Advocates say demolition also helps set the stage for rebuilding. Near what used to be OPPE 27, a small team separated steel from the rubble for recycling.
"This metal is all melted down to prepare the rebar, the steel reinforcement used inside concrete, for when construction begins again," said Douglas Mendoza, who works for state company Complejo Siderurgico Nacional (CSN).
"For the new reconstruction of La Guaira, they are going to bring truckloads of rebar to begin rebuilding."
The World Bank estimates that the earthquakes caused physical damage worth nearly $19.6bn.
The Venezuelan government has already launched a reconstruction programme called "Venezuela Renace" or "Venezuela Rises", with plans to build 1,875 homes in La Guaira.
It says it will also deliver at least 4,000 homes for 4,000 displaced families in affected areas by the end of the year.
Currently, about 24,477 people are living in temporary camps. There are 107 such sites spread across the worst-hit states: La Guaira, Caracas, Miranda and Aragua.
"Our main objective at this moment, as a government team, is to bring happiness to those who were terribly affected by the double earthquake, so they know they are not alone," President Delcy Rodriguez said on Monday.
Many devastated buildings in hard-hit areas like La Guaira are expected to be demolished in the coming weeks [Catherine Ellis/Al Jazeera]Many devastated buildings in hard-hit areas like La Guaira are expected to be demolished in the coming weeks [Catherine Ellis/Al Jazeera]Frustration and fear
But families in La Guaira who spoke to Al Jazeera described a very different experience. They expressed frustration with the government's rescue and recovery efforts.
Two of OPPE 27's four collapsed towers had already been cleared away by early August. In the remaining rubble, a group of four men used their hands and hammers to chip away at the pancaked concrete. They said that government help has been almost non-existent.
"We were without tools. We did not have help. We had to ask for a lot of help through social media — for electric hammers, grinders, for all those things," one of the men, Jose Gregorio Balcazar, said.
He spends his mornings working at a bakery and his afternoons searching through the ruins for his missing relatives, including two of his nephews, one of whom was only four years old.
Balcazar added that volunteers and families continue to lead the effort to find bodies. "There are soldiers around, but they don’t actually have permission to go into the holes or anything," he said.
For many survivors, it is simply not an option to leave the sites where their families’ bodies are buried. Viloria, for instance, keeps vigil beside the ruins of OPPE 27, as the search for her nephew Mateo continues.
"Sometimes I sleep in a truck, sometimes I sleep here, on a little mattress there," she said, pointing to a small space inside her tent.
"When it rains, sometimes I have to spend the night awake because it doesn’t stop. Water comes in from everywhere."
Jose Gregorio Belcatraz, wearing a red helmet, continues the search for bodies in OPPE 27 [Catherine Ellis/Al Jazeera]Jose Gregorio Belcatraz, wearing a red helmet, continues the search for bodies in OPPE 27 [Catherine Ellis/Al Jazeera]Point of no return
But there are other reasons that some survivors are reluctant to move into shelters. Some worry it could lead to long-term displacement.
That fear is rooted in past experience. After deadly mudslides devastated La Guaira in 1999, tens of thousands of people were left homeless.
But rather than being able to return home after the disaster subsided, many families spent years in temporary accommodations.
Some were ultimately moved into large government housing developments, including the OPPE complexes.
Those structures, however, faced criticism about their maintenance and stability for years, and many suffered catastrophic damage in the June earthquakes.
Lucia Lanfranchi, a volunteer from a social club in Caracas, has been bringing aid to La Guaira since the earthquakes struck. The survivors she met told her they feared losing what little they had left, as the push for demolition and reconstruction proceeds.
"There are people who do not want to go to shelters because they still have their homes, and they are waiting to see if they can live in them again or whether they are going to repair them," Lanfranchi said.
"They are afraid that they will lose their homes and that they will never be given another one."
Some victims said they also worried about sexual abuse or violence in camps – and humanitarian nonprofits have raised these concerns as well.
"In some camps, overcrowded shelters without separate toilets or private spaces for women and girls increase exposure to violence and abuse," a recent report from the NGO Plan International warns.
Volunteer Lucia Lanfranchi has been regularly delivering aid to those in need following the earthquakes [Catherine Ellis/Al Jazeera]Volunteer Lucia Lanfranchi has been regularly delivering aid to those in need following the earthquakes [Catherine Ellis/Al Jazeera]Looking outside of La Guaira
The choices facing survivors like Viloria remain meagre.
The earthquake destroyed her livelihood. Before the disaster, she worked as a manicurist and made cleaning products. Now, she has nothing left to earn an income.
"Because of the earthquake, I lost my merchandise. Everything was ruined. All the chemicals spilled. I lost everything," Viloria said. "Right now, I live on what my family sends me."
Viloria does not want to remain in La Guaira and would prefer to move somewhere like the capital, Caracas. Some who lost homes have already moved to states such as Maracaibo, Carabobo and Bolivar. Others have left the country altogether.
"I want to close this chapter because this brings me too many memories," Viloria said.
But for now, she cannot leave yet. Her missing nephew weighs heavily on her mind.
"I cannot say what I am going to do," she said as she prepared for another trip to search the local morgue. "I am still missing Mateo’s body."
