STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Sebastian Mocarquer has been listening with us. He has deployed to Venezuela as head of coordination with the United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination team, and he joins us from La Guaira, which was at the epicenter of the dual earthquakes. Welcome to the program.
SEBASTIAN MOCARQUER: Good morning. Thank you for having me.
INSKEEP: What do you think about when you hear, as we just did, that desperate listening for life and the rubble?
MOCARQUER: First of all, I think I share the frustration of having to be at work sites and spend many hours searching and eventually not being able to rescue more people. And also I feel for the family that we just heard looking for their loved ones, even if it's only the body recovery they're facing at this point.
INSKEEP: How do you look at your job now this many days in?
MOCARQUER: Well, we are still hopeful and fully committed to the active rescue phase. Right now, we have 46 international search and rescue teams working here in La Guaira from 26 countries. And we are fully committed right now to work in this sector. We have identified 125 work sites, and we actually have completed so far 16 live rescues - are in the process right now of - in the process of searching and rescuing. Hopefully, we can obtain more live rescues as hours and days go by, although that makes it more slimmer.
INSKEEP: You just told me 16 live rescues, meaning at least 16 occasions where you found someone alive in the rubble. Can you tell me one of those stories you've learned over the last couple of days?
MOCARQUER: Yeah. Well, actually, for example, we have a live rescue - when we say live rescue, someone that we have confirmed to be alive within a collapse and there's a search and rescue team that has either have contact with the person through direct voice or an listening device, like an acoustic sensor.
INSKEEP: Right.
MOCARQUER: And from that point on, they have been working for more than 24 hours since they first had contact. And this means that they have to breach several layers of concrete slabs. And you face the risk not only for the building, but for the neighboring buildings to collapse over their work site where the rescues are working. And this has been going on for hours as we progress and what is currently the last live rescue we have so far.
INSKEEP: Do I understand you to mean that when you say 16 live rescues, there are some of them where you are pretty sure you know someone is alive in the rubble and you're not there yet - people are still working around the clock to try to get to these individuals?
MOCARQUER: When I say live rescues, it's 16 people that we have extracted alive from the rubble...
INSKEEP: Got it.
MOCARQUER: ...Since the international teams got here.
INSKEEP: Got it. Got it. Do you feel there may still be more to find?
MOCARQUER: Well, we certainly hope so. We are working on one live extrication right now, and we certainly will commit for the next coming days to continue to search the live rescues until the Venezuelan government determines that there is no more feasibility for live rescues.
INSKEEP: Can you give me a picture of the architecture and the landscape of that coastal province so that I understand why it was so vulnerable?
MOCARQUER: Sure. This is La Guaira, where we are concentrating all of the international search and rescue efforts. It's a narrow and long piece of land between the hills and the seacoast, extending from the Maiquetia Airport, which is the International Caracas Airport, going east. And it's a coastal area where there's a lot of vacation homes and apartment buildings. And this was on actually a holiday, so many of those apartment buildings were occupied at the time that the earthquake hit.
INSKEEP: So we're talking about recreational apartments, people's second apartments, vacation homes, that sort of thing?
MOCARQUER: Yes. To some extent, yes. Some hotels and mixed construction. Yes.
INSKEEP: And a lot of it just came down?
MOCARQUER: It did. It came down. Sometime - some of them pancake-collapsed, some of them overturned and some of them - there's several blocks of buildings that collapsed, and that makes it very challenge because it poses a significant risk for rescue workers.
INSKEEP: Sebastian Mocarquer of the United Nations. Thanks for the update and good luck on your future work.
MOCARQUER: Thank you very much. Good morning. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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