Months after Venezuela’s earthquakes, families cling to hope in search of loved ones

Families in La Guaira continue searching months after Venezuela’s twin earthquakes

Activelifezero.com – More than 100 days after the twin earthquakes of June 24, the sound of excavators still carries across the ruins in parts of La Guaira. For families living beside collapsed buildings, the work is not simply debris removal. It remains a search for relatives who have not been found.

Eilyn Solano has stayed near the wreckage of OPP 26, a government social housing project that collapsed during the disaster. She lives in a small tent only meters from where the building’s concrete slabs fell, enduring the heavy midday heat while waiting for news of her youngest child, 11-year-old Jhoniel José Morales.

Solano has not left the site for a day. From her tent, she has followed each recovery from the ruins, believing her son may still be there. Her family has helped recover the remains of more than 17 people, but Jhoniel has not been located.

Authorities announced a final death toll of 6,509 on August 24, two months after the earthquakes. No official figure for missing people has been released, leaving residents and relatives to assemble their own lists and pursue leads themselves.

A family searching through every possibility

Jhoniel’s relatives initially believed he may have gone to play near a sports field beside one of the towers that came down. Security-camera footage showed him walking down the apartment building’s stairs at 3:59 p.m. on June 24, several hours before the earthquakes.

The disaster struck the family with devastating force. Jhoniel’s 15-year-old sister, María Yailén, survived. His other sister, Mariangel, 12, died when the building collapsed. Her body was recovered on the third floor outside the apartment of her grandmother, who had been caring for her that day. The grandmother was rescued alive hours later.

Search crews excavated near the sports field on September 26, but found no sign of Jhoniel there.

“Not on the field side, not at the entrance, and certainly not in the hallways,”

Those were the words of Jhoniel’s aunt, Chiquinquirá, after the area was searched. Yet the work produced another possible lead: workers found the security-camera control room and a disc containing a second video. The family says the recording shows Jhoniel leaving the building only minutes before the earthquake.

That discovery shifted the search beyond the rubble. His relatives began visiting streets, collection centers and cemeteries, including La Esperanza cemetery in Catia la Mar, which has an area for unidentified burials. They have also traveled by motorcycle between La Guaira and Caracas, checking medical facilities, morgues and shelters.

“Among all the possibilities there is a glimmer of hope, and that is why we continue the search until the end, until we obtain some kind of answer about the whereabouts of the child,”

The Solano family has appealed for Jhoniel’s photograph to remain in circulation and for anyone with information to come forward. Their determination is shaped in part by earlier loss and survival: the family also lived through the deadly Vargas mudslide of 1999.

Rescue efforts sustained by families and volunteers

In the first months after the earthquakes, residents said search work depended heavily on neighborhood solidarity. Affected families brought water, ice and electrolyte drinks for crews working under difficult conditions. Relatives, friends and volunteers created informal networks to support searches and share information.

Some areas of La Guaira, where dozens of buildings collapsed, are now marked by silence and open space where homes once stood. In other sections, military personnel have been deployed to help clear debris. That presence stands in contrast to the earliest hours after the catastrophe, when families said officials were not at the scene.

The administration of acting President Delcy Rodríguez has defended the work of rescue teams. But for people whose relatives remain unaccounted for, the practical measure of the response is whether the search continues and whether it produces answers.

“Until there is a body, there is no death”

At the Residencias Caribe housing complex, families, firefighters and volunteers have placed a bulletin board near the ruins. It is used to track the people thought to remain beneath the concrete.

Nayibe Geromes is looking for her mother, Leida Mata. The two last spoke about six hours before the earthquakes. The search is complicated by severe damage inside the building: its two basement levels are flooded with seawater and the internal structure has been destroyed.

Geromes says she has had to confront the possibility that recovery may no longer be possible in the way she once imagined.

“At this point, I don’t expect to find a complete body, but rather skeletal remains.”

Still, she refuses to treat uncertainty as an ending.

“Until there is a body, there is no death.”

Nearby, Angie Valentina Sojo Andarcia is searching for her 50-year-old husband. She was in Caracas with her daughter for a medical appointment when the earthquake began. During a telephone call with her husband, she heard glass shatter before the connection suddenly ended.

She later obtained help from a volunteer foundation to remove debris from the area that had once contained her kitchen. Like the other families at the site, she is confronting a search that has extended far beyond the immediate emergency, with every cleared section carrying the possibility of an answer.

For the families still waiting, the months since June 24 have brought exhaustion, grief and uncertainty. But the absence of a confirmed outcome has also kept hope alive. Beneath the machinery, the damaged buildings and the long lists of names, the search continues person by person.