Seven members of Burnaby’s Urban Search and Rescue team are preparing to return home from Venezuela, where they have been working to find and rescue people affected by back-to-back earthquakes.
“The experience has been a difficult one for our team,” president Ryan Berry said.
The team of volunteers, including two firefighters, paramedics, law enforcement officials and two dogs, has spent days scouring the debris for survivors.
The death toll is now more than 1,700 people after two powerful earthquakes struck the country on Wednesday.
More than 5,000 are injured and more than 15,000 have been displaced.
“We’ve been working all day and into the evening trying to find people trapped in the rubble,” Berry said.
Six days since the earthquakes struck, the mission is transitioning from rescue to recovery.
“Up until last night, they were still pulling people from the wreck,” Berry said. “So there’s a three-year-old pulled out of a site just north of here.”
North Vancouver FC director Wisam Souki waited anxiously after the earthquakes struck as they learned his mother-in-law was trapped in her apartment.
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Fortunately, neighbours rescued her, he said, but her building in Caracas is now uninhabitable.
“This has been as personal as it gets,” he told Global News.
“Everyone has been affected somehow, directly or indirectly.”
Souki is hosting a fundraiser on Saturday, July 4, for victims of the Venezuela earthquakes.
The soccer clinic runs from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at Fen Burdett Stadium in North Vancouver. It is open to players of all levels born between 2012 and 2021. Entry is by donation and anyone wanting more information can contact 1-778-866-7261.
“Regardless of what we do, we won’t be able to bring the lives that were lost back, but we have the duty to also carry on and carry their legacy the best we can by leading by example and by being great citizens and by supporting each other,” Souki added.
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