Rodríguez assures that the search and rescue stage continues in Venezuela after raising the death toll to 2,595

The president in charge of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, has stressed that the search and rescue phase continues in the country, more than a week after the double earthquake that devastated the center of the Venezuelan coast, leaving, to date, a toll of 2,595 dead and 12,400 injured, according to the latest balance sheet.

“Yesterday marked eight days of the double earthquake and, as is customary, we declared national mourning, but we have not closed the search and rescue phase,” said the interim president in a press conference in which she stressed that wherever there are “active points” in which it is known that there are people alive, the aforementioned stage “continues.”

Along these lines, Rodríguez has highlighted the reception of a “very highly prepared” Israeli group that will help in the infrastructure recovery process, as well as determine if, in certain points of the areas affected by the earthquakes, there are living people or corpses that must be rescued before starting any other infrastructure process.

Likewise, Rodríguez has claimed to have held talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and with the United States Department of State in order to create a fund for reconstruction, with an initial equivalent of 200,000,000 dollars (about 174,810,000 euros) in funds that, he has specified, will be “recovered” from the IMF.

In line, pointing out that so far at least 862 aftershocks have been counted, the Miraflores interim has insisted on the need to “be very attentive to the fact that the infrastructures that are impacted may suffer a major mishap as a result of the aftershocks” in the near future.

“Our objective, at this moment, in addition to saving lives is the comprehensive care of the victims of this double earthquake and the future reconstruction plans, where the president of the National Assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, is at the head of the General Staff of Transitory Camps, Housing and Infrastructure,” the president in charge insisted.

“MEDIA LABORATORIES” TO GENERATE “CHAOS”

Questioned by the media about the “slowness” in the deployment of public forces after the seismic double, Rodríguez has defended her management by ensuring that “they were immediately activated” and that “they were deployed from the first moment.”

Next, the interim president has disfigured in this regard the, in her opinion, “activation” of “media laboratories” to “generate chaos” and “hinder” search and rescue efforts.

Supported by this argument, the president in charge has explained the militarization of the state of La Guaira, seriously affected by the earthquakes, maintaining that it was necessary to do so “when the ‘everyone to La Guaira’ matrix was activated in the laboratories.”

“The first decision of that day was to militarize the state of La Guaira because we could not allow media laboratories and media matrices created to disrupt and generate chaos to make search and rescue efforts impossible,” he insisted, calling it “miserable” and “heartless” to cause “this type of chaos” to a “people under anguish, suffering and pain.”