CARACAS: Venezuela's interim president Delcy Rodriguez vehemently denied on Thursday (Jul 3) that her government reacted too slowly to destruction caused by two earthquakes which devastated the country's northern coast, killing more than 2,000 people, after days of widespread criticism of the official response effort."It was a natural tragedy on a scale we never imagined, even though we knew that a seismic event could occur in our country," Rodriguez said in her first press conference since taking power in January after the US ouster of Nicolas Maduro. "We did not wait one, two or three days. We acted immediately."Rodriguez said her government issued an emergency decree to activate civil protection and emergency protocols within hours of the tremors, which struck last Wednesday at magnitudes of 7.2 and 7.5, less than a minute apart.
She also said nearly all the regional officials in La Guaira - the coastal state that was hardest-hit - perished in buildings that were reduced to rubble.She put the rising death toll at 2,595, and said the government was not yet ending its search and rescue efforts."We can still find people alive," she told a room packed with dozens of international journalists.
