Critical rescue window closing in Venezuela as quake death toll nears 1,500

Emergency teams with rescue dogs were searching Sunday for any remaining survivors of powerful twin earthquakes that struck Venezuela, where the death toll has surpassed 1,450, and nearly 200 buildings have completely collapsed.

A man and his teen son were found alive under the rubble Sunday by French and American rescue teams in Caraballeda, a town about 40 kilometers north of Caracas, AFP journalists saw.

The rescue offered a glimmer of hope in an ongoing tragedy that has shaken a country already mired in an economic crisis, but tens of thousands of people were still reported missing, and the critical 72-hour window for rescuing trapped victims following a natural disaster has now passed.

Millions more people were feared to lack sanitation and other basic needs after one of Latin America's most devastating earthquake disasters.

Rescue teams from the United States, Mexico, and elsewhere scrambled to save people as desperate residents dug by hand for relatives trapped in the pancaked layers and rubble of collapsed apartments.

Some 774 buildings were badly damaged in back-to-back quakes of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 that struck on Wednesday evening, including 189 buildings that have totally collapsed, National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez said Sunday.

In one of the worst-hit areas, the coastal city of La Guaira, Hector Aguilera came to search for four family members buried in the rubble.

"We don't have the support to get our family out -- we can't do it alone. They are buried there: we know they are dead, but here we are," he said.

"We have no hope left; all I have are memories."

Experts say the first 72 hours after natural disasters define the narrow window for rescuing the living. After that, the search usually becomes one of recovering bodies.

In the San Bernardino neighborhood of Caracas, volunteers clambered over a collapsed building, using drills to break up concrete and forming lines to remove rubble by hand.

In Chacao, another area of the capital, large electronic screens on a building usually used for advertising were showing the faces of missing people in a bid to help find them.

On Sunday, Rodriguez reported 1,450 dead -- a toll expected to rise -- with 3,150 people injured.

Even as rescue efforts continued apace, outbreaks of looting hit La Guaira, much of which now lies in rubble after Wednesday's disaster.

Pharmacies, supermarkets, and other businesses were ransacked, said residents, some of whom complained of the slow and meager post-quake aid coming from authorities.

AFP