Young volunteers run shelters for Venezuela earthquake survivors

At the Republic of Panama school in La Guaira, young volunteers have turned classrooms into a round-the-clock command center for people displaced by Venezuela’s twin earthquakes. The team, mostly members of the youth wing of Venezuela’s socialist party and aged 20 to 27, is coordinating radios, medical staff and supplies while many of them are homeless themselves.

Inside the school, more than 350 residents were registered, with an average of three families sleeping in each classroom on metal bunk beds. The shelter included showers, a medical clinic, a laundromat and a cafeteria, and volunteers kept track of injuries, previous addresses and lunch needs through a digital registration system.

The earthquakes struck less than a minute apart and measured magnitude 7.2 and 7.5, leaving families across La Guaira and beyond searching for relatives, homes and news of the missing. Government figures published on Wednesday put the death toll at 2,295, while an unofficial list of the missing stood at 40,567. A U.N. envoy said 10,000 body bags were being procured for Venezuela.

Residents in the shelter criticized interim President Delcy Rodriguez’s government for a slow and inadequate response, and the International Rescue Committee said the scale of the response did not match the scale of the humanitarian need. Across La Guaira, nine shelters were operating, each run by a different team.

Many were born just before or in the years after the 1999 landslide that killed up to 30,000 people in La Guaira, and they now find themselves managing one of the country’s most severe disaster responses. Their work has stretched from organizing sleeping arrangements to handling the emotional strain of residents who lost relatives, homes or both.

Search-and-rescue teams from El Salvador and Chile rescued a 44-year-old security guard from rubble in La Guaira on July 2.