UN says over 50,000 missing after Venezuela quakes

**Pete Ross** (0:00)
This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Pete Ross, and in the early hours of Saturday 27th June, these are our main stories. The search for earthquake survivors in Venezuela continues as the UN confirms more than 50,000 people are still missing. The US says it's launched what it describes as retaliatory strikes on Iran. President Trump's former National Security Adviser, John Bolton, pleads guilty to mishandling classified information.
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We start this podcast in Venezuela, where the number of dead after Wednesday's devastating twin earthquakes is rising dramatically as more bodies are recovered from collapsed buildings. The latest official figures say over 900 people have been killed. The United Nations says more than 50,000 people are still unaccounted for. Those figures alone give us a sense of the scale of this disaster. The Northern state of La Guaida was one of the worst hit areas. Our reporter Vanessa Silva is there.

**Vanessa Silva** (1:26)
The level of devastation has no words to explain what we have seen. In this area of this coastal town of Venezuela, the one that was hit with more force with the earthquakes that shake the country on Wednesday, you can see there's so many destructions. Wherever you see, it's a building collapsed. This building at my back is just completely lining to one side. It's about to collapse. And there is so many places. And you can see people struggling with their own hands, trying to remove the rubble, the concrete, everything in the searching of the loved ones. But it's a lot of work that is needed. The health international rescue teams are arriving to Venezuela. But still it's not enough. Still it's not deployed in all the places that we are seeing today. I mean, we literally see the floor open, the earth break in this area of La Guaira.

**Pete Ross** (2:40)
Vanessa Silva in La Guaira. Just to the south of there, in the capital Caracas, our Latin America correspondent, Will Grant, has been back to the neighbourhood where he used to live.

**Will Grant** (2:51)
I'm standing on the very corner of my street and only a matter of metres away is a completely flattened building. I used to walk past it every day. I lived three doors down. A very, very strange feeling to be looking at that building so devastated.
Knowing that as the earth moving, equipment moves in now to pull out rubble and make a situation safe for rescue crews to try and go back in again, that sort of game of stopping earth moving to listen again and see if there's any signs of life, is just harrowing to see with all the neighbours sitting out on their porches waiting for information, crossing their fingers, praying and so on. I'm looking right as we speak at homes that have had the complete front of them sheared off, apartment blocks that will never be possible to be inhabited again. I've seen groups of architects and surveyors, presumably from the city and some private firms, trying to work out what is safe, what can be salvaged and what eventually will need to be demolished. But for right now, I think the majority of the focus of most Venezuelans is on this shocking, this awful figure of 50,000 missing.

**Pete Ross** (4:02)
Yeah, that's quite an overwhelming figure. Do we have any updates on what more we can expect from that? And can you describe the sort of response? I understand that it's quite chaotic. The earthquake perhaps is exposed.
You know, the fragility of the medical system there, due to economic reasons, etc. What exactly is going on with that as well?

**Will Grant** (4:22)
Well, let's start with the numbers. I mean, we've seen the number of dead creep up from, you know, around about 100 to then over 200 and now closer to 1,000. And the fears are that those numbers, that shocking number of 50,000 missing, will start to be converted into, unfortunately, numbers of dead in due course.
As for the second question about whether or not the state can cope, basically, whether or not there's sufficient equipment, earth-moving equipment and so on, what the response has been? Well, I think it's fair to say it's been patchy, as you might expect. Venezuela has been through some extremely tough economic times in recent years.
There's been deep-seated problems with corruption and so on. So at a time like this, you're right, those things are exposed. There's the fact that in the economic turmoil of recent years, somewhere between 20 to 25% of the population left, there's been this massive outward exodus of young people and expertise. Plus, of course, the political situation, that only a matter of months ago, six months ago, there were airstrikes in this city. This nation had its president removed at gunpoint by US troops. All of these things create instability, of course. So, look, I think the truth of the matter is that Venezuelans are coping the very best they can. The response among ordinary people is really impressive, really laudable. Everybody is turning out as best as possible. I'm seeing so many people volunteering, health workers walking past me right now, no doubt doing extra shifts and shifts on top of shifts.