San Francisco Frontiers - Venezuela's diaspora searches for quake victims on social media

After a four-day search, a photo confirmed the worst -- Magnolia had died in the collapse of her building in Caracas.

"The agony is over," Pessina said after she was finally able to confirm that the clothes on one of the bodies found under the rubble belonged to her 79-year-old mother.

A Venezuelan researcher who works in Quito, Pessina could have been there herself.

She had been visiting her mother for three weeks and boarded a plane to go home just a few hours before the magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 quakes struck on June 24.

"The earthquake happened while I was flying," she told AFP.

After landing, "my phone blew up with messages because so many people thought I was still in Caracas," she said.

Before she could even get home, "I had already received a video of the building on the ground...That's when the desperation moved to another level."

Pessina and her siblings began an agonizing search.

They asked family and neighborhood chat groups for information about Magnolia, and hired someone to check lists of survivors, wounded and missing in hospitals across Caracas.

Thanks to a WhatsApp group, neighbors from the 14-story Petunia building where Magnolia lived were able to connect with those looking for their relatives -- from the US, Spain, Dominican Republic, Panama and Ecuador.

A message in that chat on Friday said a body matching Magnolia's description had been recovered.

A day later, Pessina confirmed it was her mother through her clothing.

"I spent three weeks cleaning and folding her clothes, that's how I was able to recognize what she was wearing in that photo," she explained.

- 'I haven't slept' -

The Pessina family is not alone.

Many Venezuelans abroad are searching from afar for family members among the nearly 2,300 dead and tens of thousands missing.

Venezuela experienced the largest exodus in recent Latin American history, with 7.9 million people leaving the country in the last decade, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

From all over the world, the diaspora has worked to send medicine, diapers and infant formula to Venezuela, while posting rescue pleas on social media.

Andre, who did not give his last name, told AFP from the US city of Miami that his brother-in-law was in the Vallarta building in Playa Grande.

"We still don't know anything about him," he said.

In that part of La Guaira, one of the areas worst-hit by the quakes, neighbors helped each other until Salvadoran rescuers arrived over the weekend.

"I haven't slept since this tragedy happened. I post pleas for help, for donations, I reconnect people. Everything is needed and I get thousands of messages," he said.

Andre said rescue work at his brother-in-law's building was suspended Tuesday after neighbors found police officers stealing money from the rubble.

"They didn't arrive in time to save lives. Maybe my brother-in-law was alive in those first hours. But they certainly arrived in time to steal," he said angrily.

- 'Minds over there' -

In Spain, Broli Rumbos found out that one of his friends had spent hours searching for his family in the rubble of a building in La Guaira.

"It's weird to be so far away, to go on with your routine," he wrote in a chat with school friends.

"We're living here, with our minds over there."

For the Pessina family, they must now decide how to say goodbye to their mother. A funeral will likely take place over livestream once Magnolia's sisters receive her ashes.

"We don't know when, all of that is total chaos right now," Pessina said.

But she added that the ceremony will definitely feature music, because her mother loved to sing.

N.Wilson--SFF