San Francisco Frontiers - More than 50,000 missing after Venezuela quakes, death toll soars

Interim president Delcy Rodriguez said the death toll was now at 589, a number that is likely to "rise significantly," according to UN aid chief Tom Fletcher.

"We've got over 50,000 people missing, over 500 people dead, so a massive job to go through the rubble," he told AFP.

Rescuers used heavy machinery, but also their bare hands, in a race to claw out people caught under rubble in the worst-hit earthquake zone, north of the capital Caracas.

At one of the flattened buildings, AFP saw workers using sledgehammers to break the debris and calling for "absolute silence" to detect cries from survivors.

Oil-rich Venezuela is facing its worst natural disaster in more than a century after more than a decade of economic collapse hollowed out hospitals and public services, driving millions to leave the country.

The country is still in a fragile transition six months after the United States ousted leader Nicolas Maduro.

Rescue efforts have been slow with desperate calls for more heavy machinery as families stand by helpless to pull out loved ones they could hear alive in the rubble.

"It is a lot of rock, and with bare hands it is impossible," said Amparo del Giudice, scrabbling through rubble in search of her son.

Two earthquakes, measured at magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5, hit northern Venezuela within less than a minute of each other on Wednesday night, sending hundreds of buildings tumbling.

- Help arrives -

National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez said Thursday that more than 200 people were confirmed trapped alive.

The UN humanitarian agency OCHA said search and rescue teams from at least 17 countries were being mobilized to help find survivors.

Spanish, Salvadoran, Swiss, Colombian, and Mexican rescue teams were already on the ground.

A senior US military official landed in Caracas to oversee Washington's relief efforts.

The United States said it was deploying two warships, transport planes and helicopters and mobilizing $150 million in aid. Washington has also suspended economic sanctions on Venezuela that could have hindered rescue operations for four months.

"Even before the earthquakes, millions of people across Venezuela were facing food insecurity, collapsing health services, protection risks, and limited access to basic services," the UN and other aid agencies said in a statement Friday.

"The international community must not allow this emergency to deepen into a larger human tragedy".

Earthquakes of similar magnitude claimed more than 200,000 lives in Haiti in January 2010 and 73,000 lives in Kashmir in October 2005.

- 'Authorities useless' -

The dead included nine Portuguese nationals, four Spaniards, two Brazilians, two Chinese nationals and one Italian-Venezuelan.

Fifty-six Portuguese citizens and 120 Spaniards were missing or otherwise unaccounted for, according to their respective governments.

Satellite photographs of La Guaira -- the worst hit area north of Caracas -- showed one crumpled residential complex after another.

AFP reporters witnessed residents looting a local supermarket in the city on Thursday.

"This isn't the time for looting, it's time to enforce the law," said Argenis Mendez, a local resident who lamented the lack of help.

"The authorities are useless; useless because the military should be here with all the heavy machinery they have," he added.

Venezuela's northern coast sits on a boundary between the Caribbean and South American tectonic plates, but has not experienced a significant quake since 1997, when 73 people died. Another quake in 1967 killed 236 people.

This week's quake was felt in neighboring Colombia, where residents in Bogota evacuated buildings as a precaution.

Tremors were also reported in several cities in northern Brazil, according to the country's seismic monitoring network.

V.Mitchell--SFF