Fear of thousands of dead in Venezuela: ‘We went outside, the scene was like in a horror movie’ Apocalypse

“We had to climb over the rubble. The building supervisor with the baby, all the neighbors coming down… But I only saw one family coming out of that building.”

Acting President Delcy Rodriguez said that at least 164 people have been confirmed dead and nearly 1,000 injured, and that the government is cooperating with companies that would use their construction vehicles to speed up efforts to help those still trapped.

The most affected area is the state of La Guaira near Caracas, where the airport of the capital is located. Witness footage shows scenes of panic as ceilings in the airport and entire buildings along the coast collapsed.

“Dozens of buildings have collapsed, and we are currently conducting very intensive rescue efforts to save as many lives as God allows us to save,” Rodriguez said on state television just before 1 a.m. local time Thursday.

“The federal state of La Guaira is a real tragedy, it has become a disaster zone.”

Houses also collapsed near the epicenter of the earthquake in Morón, a small coastal town in the federal state of Carabobo, where there is no water or electricity. Among at least eight people killed in that area, three were children, head Emily Riera told Reuters.

In that city, workers were restarting the Morón petrochemical complex, the second largest in Venezuela, the local fire chief said. It appears that the rest of the oil infrastructure was not affected after the damage was assessed.

“It felt like all those houses were collapsing on us,” said 29-year-old Geilin Morales, who had just left her home with her husband and 6-year-old daughter when the earthquake destroyed it.

The US Geological Survey, using predictive modeling to estimate the number of dead, announced that it will most likely be thousands, while there is a significant probability that it will exceed 10,000.

A website tracking the missing, set up by opposition leaders, many of whom are based outside Venezuela, listed more than 24,000 missing at 10:40 a.m. local time.

Many Venezuelans were at home when the earthquakes struck, on a national holiday.

“It was a very loud crash. Things were falling all over the house. I’ve never experienced anything like it,” said 56-year-old Coro Martinez, who lives in eastern Caracas.

The Pentagon deploys help at the airport

Rodriguez said rescue teams from other countries would arrive soon, thanking leaders including US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. She called for unity in Venezuela, where anti-government protests over annual inflation of more than 500% have intensified since a violent operation to arrest President Nicolas Maduro in January ordered by Trump.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that rescue teams have been deployed and that the Pentagon will send funds to the damaged airport.

Other towns and cities near Caracas hit by the earthquake, including El Junquito and La Guaira, were left without power on Thursday morning, further complicating the situation. The UN Human Rights Mission in Venezuela has called on the government to lift restrictions on social media, saying it is a “matter of life and death”. Access has become available in some parts of the country, where mobile service is already unreliable.

UN humanitarian aid chief Tom Fletcher said that the rapid deployment of international rescue teams is being coordinated, adding that a “massive collective effort” will be needed in a country where even before the earthquake, 8 million people were in need of humanitarian aid.