A 32-year-old shopkeeper wakes up before dawn, walks to a pile of rubble that used to be his home, and starts digging with his bare hands.
He already knows his mother, brother and niece are gone.
He's still looking anyway.
This is Miguel Baez, one of thousands combing through the wreckage of La Guaira, Venezuela — three weeks after two earthquakes hit 39 seconds apart.
Magnitude 7.5, then 7.2.
The death toll now stands at 4,500.
Baez was on a bus when the ground shook.
He came home to dust, screams, and a 12-story building folded into itself.
His family — mother Solangel, brother Hector, 10-year-old niece Susej — were inside apartment 101.
All he's recovered so far:
🎨 A fragment of a painting
🎸 His brother's guitar
🎻 His niece's viola
No bodies. Not yet.
Volunteers hacked a passage into the sixth floor — less than a meter wide.
Men crawl in on their bellies, into the building's collapsed guts.
Baez was inside during an aftershock.
"We had to get out because if not, well..." he trails off.
He sleeps a few hours a night now.
Then wakes up wondering: who worked last night? Which body did they find?
When rescuers pulled out a young girl's remains recently, he ran toward it in desperation.
It wasn't Susej.
⚡ Toll has climbed steadily — from roughly 235 in the first days, past 1,700 within a week, past 2,295 by July 1, to 4,500 now
🩹 Over 11,200 injured
🏠 Tens of thousands still unaccounted for
💰 The UN has launched a $296 million relief appeal for the region
And still — the official response has been too slow for families like Baez's, forcing residents to become their own rescue teams.
This isn't just a disaster update.
It's a portrait of what happens after the headlines stop counting bodies and start counting survivors.
Baez scrolls old Mother's Day photos on his phone.
"We practically have no tears left to express and feel what we feel," he says.
He's still going back every morning.
Not for hope.
For a burial his family deserves.
That's all for now!
