Short on Time and Tools, a Community Comes Together to Search for Survivors

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A single jackhammer. A pair of pickaxes. Men swinging with all their might to break through multiple stories of concrete to try to reach the living.

The scene on Saturday night in San Bernardino, a middle class neighborhood in Caracas, showcased both the severe shortage of heavy machinery needed to rescue survivors following Wednesday’s double earthquakes and the massive community mobilization that has taken place to try to fill that gap.

At the Residencia Rita, an apartment building that crumbled when the quakes hit, finding anyone alive three days later would have been a miracle. And yet, hundreds of people gathered to help locate survivors on Saturday.

They lined up like firefighters, passing buckets of rubble down the line to try to clear the way.

“We will always have hope,” said María Alejandra Navarro, 25, a journalist with rescue training who said she had brought a team of 14 volunteers to the scene.

VideoCreditCredit...Fabiola Ferrero for The New York TimesImageA neighbor watched as rescue teams went through the rubble. Credit...Fabiola Ferrero for The New York Times

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