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🇻🇪 Venezuela /Disasters & Emergencies

Venezuelan families face agony after Colombia earthquake

From El Nacional · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish, summarized and contextualized by DistantNews.

At a glance

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  • A 7.4 magnitude earthquake in Colombia has caused distress for families in Venezuela's Sucre state, who are seeking news of missing loved ones and help to repatriate bodies.
  • Relatives in Venezuela face financial and communication barriers, relying on social media and community aid to find information and cover the high costs of bringing deceased family members home.
  • The article highlights the struggles of families like Oriannis Rodríguez, who had to crowdfund to bring her cousin's body back, and Nieves Malavé, desperately trying to contact her children in a heavily affected Colombian city.

The recent 7.4 magnitude earthquake in Colombia has left families in Venezuela's Sucre state in a state of painful uncertainty. Many are desperately seeking news of loved ones who disappeared in the neighboring country, while others grapple with the immense challenge of repatriating the bodies of those who did not survive.

Families in this coastal Venezuelan state, far from the Colombian border, are turning to social media and community solidarity for information. They face significant hurdles due to a lack of local contacts and the inability to communicate with authorities, leaving them with few options for handling the repatriation of bodies and the substantial associated costs.

The day before the earthquake, she had just been discharged after surgery. She was at home when the tremor occurred and, due to the shock (of the earthquake), she suffered a heart attack.

— Oriannis RodríguezDescribing the sudden death of her cousin, Petra María Gómez, during the earthquake.

In the fishing and tourist town of Arapo, the tragedy of the Colombian earthquake quickly became an economic battle against time. Oriannis Rodríguez recounted the anguish of losing her cousin, Petra María Gómez, a community leader who had emigrated to Cartagena, Colombia, seven years prior with her family. Gómez died of a heart attack during the earthquake, and her family faced a $1,000 advance payment to transport her body back to Venezuela. Rodríguez had to launch a public collection on social media to cover the expenses, eventually managing to raise part of the funds needed, but received no state assistance.

Meanwhile, 150 kilometers away in El Pilar, Nieves Malavé is living through days of anxiety, trying to ascertain the well-being of her two young children and their father, who have resided in Pereira, one of the cities hardest hit by the earthquake, for six years. After three days of desperate searching, she received a WhatsApp message confirming they were alive, but communication has ceased since then. Malavé, who cultivates corn and vegetables, faces logistical challenges in obtaining updates due to the lack of phone service in her village and unstable internet connections and daily power outages in El Pilar's urban center.

We were able to pay it, but we were left very indebted.

— Oriannis RodríguezReferring to the $1,000 advance payment required to transport her cousin's body from Cartagena to Venezuela.
DistantNews Editorial

Originally published by El Nacional in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized by our editorial team with added local perspective. Read our editorial standards.

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