B.C. man witnesses Venezuela earthquake disaster firsthand
A Vancouver resident visiting family is now part of relief efforts as death toll estimates reach into the tens of thousands.
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Arnaldo Dos Santos was inside a 14-story condo in Venezuela when earthquakes struck on Wednesday. He calls it a miracle the building remained standing while so many others collapsed around him.
"The fear that was going through my head is inexplicable; it's everything that goes through your mind: my kids back home with my wife," Dos Santos said.
Since the initial quake, Dos Santos has thrown himself into relief efforts, using his own money and donations sent from Vancouver's Venezuelan community to purchase and deliver supplies to the hardest-hit areas, including La Guaira. The scale of the tragedy is only beginning to come into focus as morgues overflow.
"There was no room for bodies. Bodies were piled up outside in the yard and containers, in body bags, no body bags," he said.
Thousands of Venezuelans are still missing. Estimates of the death toll range into the tens of thousands. For Dos Santos, one of the hardest parts is seeing the number of children now on the streets.
"The orphanages do not have the capacity to bring in all these children that are now left without parents. As a country, we do not have the resources to deal with the massive tragedy like it is," he added.
Rahul Singh with GlobalMedic, a charity providing medical aid to disaster-struck areas, drew a comparison to the 2010 Haiti earthquake. "If you look at the modelling, there's a one in five chance that there's going to be 10,000 killed, a two in five chance that it'll be up over 100,000. It's going to be a significant death toll. And then the people that survived, they are going to overwhelm the medical system."
Canada's strained political relationship with Venezuela has complicated aid delivery. "The politics of this has to go to the side, and we have to focus on the humanitarian imperative," Singh said.
For Dos Santos, the scale of the nation's trauma is unmistakable. "I had cried like I never thought I would in my life. I thought it was a really tough individual, but I'm telling you, this will break you," he said.
