The back-to-back 7.2- and 7.5-magnitude earthquakes that rocked the Caribbean country within seconds of each other devastated this coastal state near Caracas, reducing entire neighborhoods to rubble.As the official death toll rose past 1,700 and hospital morgues overflowed, the dock has been transformed into a mortuary, dotted with body bags and coffins.Some of the bodies have been covered in lime to slow their decomposition.Near a white tent, about a hundred empty urns awaited ashes of the dead after cremation. "My family is in there. They tell me my sister and her children are there, and my brother's children," 25-year-old Wilker Molalla told AFP as he waited to be called to identify his dead.Out of his family of 11, only Molalla and his brother survived. They were at work when the quakes struck, causing high-rise apartment buildings, shopping centers and schools to crumple.Carrying bouquets of flowers, relatives arrived to identify their loved ones or receive their bodies for burial.Many were fiercely critical of the state's handling of the disaster, which has left residents in some places digging through rubble with their bare hands to try reach trapped family members.Identified by a ring
'I recognized her ring': identifying Venezuela's dead in a makeshift morgue
At a makeshift morgue in the quake-hit Venezuelan port of La Guaira, forensic experts in blue gowns and caps picked their way through dozens of bodies laid out in bags under the sun.










