Blog de Valentina Oropeza

Here’s my contribution to the BBC News Mundo newsletter for this Friday, June 26—two days after the earthquakes in Venezuela…

When the earthquake struck Venezuela on Wednesday, June 24, at 6:04 p.m., my sister managed to send me a WhatsApp voice message to let me know she was with Mom at their home in Caracas.

Although I called them immediately several times, no one answered. Friends and family in other chat groups said that phone lines and the internet were down; some had even lost power.

Those who had a connection used strong words to describe the tremor: “Incredibly intense, awful, terrible”… Those words also served as reactions to the videos that were beginning to circulate.

Disoriented by the absence and the distance, we Venezuelans abroad—nearly 8 million who had left the country in the last decade—asked on WhatsApp: “Have you talked to your family?” “Can you help me find my mom?”

As the dust settled over the rubble, we began to see the scale of the disaster: dozens of collapsed buildings in Caracas and La Guaira, voices calling for help from beneath the ruins, entire families missing.

This Friday, less than 48 hours after the “double earthquake,” there are 589 dead and some 3,000 injured, though images abound of people in the streets, overwhelmed by the tragedy of knowing their relatives are trapped beneath the rubble without help to move the slabs crushing them.

When asked how we’re doing, we Venezuelans reply: “Fine.”

Fine if our family members are alive, even if they’re injured, have lost their pets, their homes, and all their belongings.

Fine if we’re not waiting for rescuers to find a relative who lived in a collapsed house.

Fine because my sister sent another voice message to let me know that she and my mother had managed to get out of the building after their apartment collapsed.

Fine when we receive messages of solidarity from friends and acquaintances in Argentina, Colombia, Central America, Europe, the United States, Mexico, Uruguay, and even Australia.

“We’re just grateful to be alive,” a friend told me this morning. “Grateful that we’re among those who can help, rather than those who need help.”