LA GUAIRA: Rescuers from around the world pushed Tuesday to save any final survivors trapped under mountains of rubble after Venezuela’s massive quakes that killed over 1,700 people, with tens of thousands still unaccounted for.
The twin quakes of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 — the strongest to hit the South American nation in more than a century — likely damaged or destroyed 58,870 buildings, according to a preliminary assessment of satellite data published by NASA.
By the latest official count, some 1,700 are dead and 5,000 are injured, with no governmental word on the number of missing. Other estimates place these in the tens of thousands.
At the only public cemetery in the capital Caracas, the two crematory ovens have been working at full capacity.
Between Friday and Sunday, 60 to 70 burials were held each day.
