Venezuela Earthquake + 30hrs

Latin America Correspondent Jon Bonfiglio speaks to Guto Harri for Times Radio. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

On Wednesday night. At least two hundred and thirty-five people have been confirmed as killed and over four thousand injured. Joining us for the latest is the Latin America correspondent for the Times, John Bonfilio. Thank you very much uh for joining us this morning. Hey, good morning. What is the latest on the ground? What can you tell us?

Jon Bonfiglio 0:20

Middle of the night in uh Caracas and the nearby coastal city of La Guaíra, which is the one, the um the sort of urban centre that has been most devastated by the by the quakes, and we're 30 hours on from these um yeah, from these not just the quakes themselves, but also the dozens of aftershots which have hit the area. As you say, we we know about thousands injured, and the death toll currently stands at nearly 250. But the issue is that the expectation uh alongside the current thousands of missing is that this is going to rise significantly into the four figures at the very least. Uh, we know of uh we have confirmed scores of buildings collapsed entirely, and hundreds of others uh have attained partial damage. And we've got um uh I mean many, many people in Caracas and La Weda now spending a second night outside, unable or afraid to return home for fear of uh you know ongoing collapses to the to the buildings. And of course, we're in that phase now where rescuers in through another night are desperately searching through rubble and still hearing voices of those trapped in buildings um in across both both areas. We're in that what's generally referred to as that sort of 72 golden hour period where there's sort of a three-day period where most rescues can take place if uh if possible. So it's a race against time, as usually happens in earthquakes, to um to rescue survivors.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

And it's it's a tricky and very specialized job, isn't it, to sort of find signs of life in the rubble, which is why different countries uh are offering very different specific forms of help.

Jon Bonfiglio 1:56

You're absolutely right. I mean, and not only is it um a specialized role uh that uh is generally sort of undertaken by limited groups internationally, but also it's important to say that um you know the by now generation-long collapse of the Venezuelan economy and civic structures have left Venezuelan society at the precipice even before the earthquake, and the country just has no capacity to respond to an incident of this size, scale, and magnitude.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

Um one side effect of that, which uh is a weird sort of mixed blessing, I guess, is I was reading that a lot of the buildings were less occupied than they would have been naturally because so many people have fled the country. Is that uh at least one sort of silver lining in all this?

Jon Bonfiglio 2:40

Yeah, I mean, I I think two things about um about the evening when the earthquake hit. One was it was it was a national holiday, so um a lot of sort of families were gathered together. Uh there was definitely less sort of street movement and and uh movement across public transport. But the other thing, of course, is yeah, I mean, depending on how you measure it between a a quarter and a third of Venezuela's standing population is currently not in Venezuela for all the aforementioned difficulties that we've that we've uh sort of covered over the course of the last few years. So, in that sense, there's definitely the population of Venezuela is significantly reduced on what, say, it would have been five, ten years ago.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

What are the expectations now in the US? You know, they chose to get involved, they toppled the leadership of Venezuela, they basically agreed to a uh uh a successor uh on on condition that uh they behave themselves. Um what are the expectations now that they have to actually step up having got involved in Venezuela?

Jon Bonfiglio 3:37

Yeah, well I mean Donald Trump has uh and Marco Rivia, the Secretary of State, have um have announced uh funding uh in the $150 million range to support um the search and rescue. Again, they've sort of identified that this is the period most crucial for search and rescue efforts. Um they've also uh issued sanctions relief, and then uh they're also gathering um urgent military aid to send to the country. Now that's of course somewhat incongruous, as this will make the second time this year that the US military has arrived in Venezuela, although of course on this occasion for completely different reasons.

SPEAKER_01 4:14

Yeah, and I guess some will reflect on it's easier to go in and uh topple a leader than it is to rebuild after the devastation of a hurricane.

Jon Bonfiglio 4:23

Yeah, that was very much that was very much a uh you know single, I mean, what was it, multi-hour strike that they undertook to remove Nicolas Maduro, but of course anything like this um takes, I mean, it doesn't just take months, it takes years, and of course, that's one of the things we've seen in Venezuela is actually the the sort of the the the collapse of the the economy there over a period of time is at least in part one of the reasons why so many buildings have have collapsed because of poor materials, because of poor building codes, because of poor access to sort of infrastructure that can help you sort of build um uh uh construct buildings that are resistant to these kinds of events.

SPEAKER_01 5:01

Um, it was a pretty freaky combination, two of the biggest uh earthquakes ever, 39 seconds apart. That was always going to be really devastating. But you're hinting already that the country, you know, the infrastructure wasn't well structured for that. Do you have any hope going forwards with some sort of stable leadership, with the US behind, with, you know, a lot of natural resources, that this supposedly or potentially rich country can actually rebuild itself uh more resiliently?

Jon Bonfiglio 5:32

Yeah, I mean you're absolutely right. There was the two really um significant strong earthquakes that took uh that took place, obviously in in proximity to each other. Uh I would also add that they were very shallow earthquakes, so that also meant that they were felt more broadly um or more significantly. And I mean I guess yeah, the the hope is I mean, to some extent the the hope since Maduro was removed, you know, whatever your perspective on that was that that event could potentially mark a new beginning for uh for Venezuela.