{"id":922145,"date":"2026-07-24T06:14:03","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T11:14:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/24\/shortages-of-rescue-equipment-hampered-venezuelas-earthquake-response\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T06:14:03","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T11:14:03","slug":"shortages-of-rescue-equipment-hampered-venezuelas-earthquake-response","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/24\/shortages-of-rescue-equipment-hampered-venezuelas-earthquake-response\/","title":{"rendered":"Shortages of Rescue Equipment Hampered Venezuela\u2019s Earthquake Response"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In the hours after Venezuela\u2019s devastating earthquakes, residents dug through mountains of collapsed concrete with their bare hands. Some pleaded on social media for excavators. Rescuers worked without generators or the demolition tools needed to reach survivors trapped beneath collapsed buildings.<\/p>\n

Volunteers and experts say the country lacked the specialized equipment needed for a disaster of this magnitude, slowing rescue efforts during the critical first days after the quakes, which so far have killed more than 1,900 people<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cDesperation is reigning because everyone wants rescuers at their specific location, but the rescuers know that without tools, they can\u2019t do anything,\u201d said Samuel Hern\u00e1ndez, a 34-year-old mechanical engineer volunteering in La Guaira, a northern coastal region most ravaged by the temblors. \u201cIt\u2019s the ugliest thing I\u2019ve seen in my life. I feel like crying every second I am down there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Venezuela had shortages of a wide range of specialized equipment, said Jacobo Vidarte, an emergency management specialist in the country. That included fiber-optic cameras to search under collapsed buildings, sound-detection equipment to identify survivors, high-frequency radios that work inside concrete structures, hydraulic lifting equipment, power cutters, proper flashlights and trained search dogs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Equipment like that can make a big difference in finding people in the first days after a disaster, before the window for finding survivors starts to close, experts said. <\/p>\n

Foreign countries are sending in hundreds of rescue workers as well as trained search dogs, but international search teams are forced to make impossible triage decisions because of the volume of building collapses. <\/p>\n

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Genevieve Glatsky and Tibisay Romero
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Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load. In the hours after Venezuela\u2019s devastating earthquakes, residents dug through mountains of collapsed concrete with their bare hands. Some pleaded on social media for excavators. Rescuers worked<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":922146,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2176,32609],"tags":[14266,127169],"class_list":["post-922145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rescue","category-shortages","tag-rescue","tag-shortages"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=922145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/922146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=922145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=922145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=922145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}