By Vivian Sequera and Mayela Armas
LA GUAIRA/CARACAS, June 26 (Reuters) - Desperate Venezuelans and rescue teams raced to find survivors trapped under rubble on Friday as the death toll from twin earthquakes neared 1,000 and frustrations mounted over limited resources and help from the state.
Foreign rescue teams and aid reached the hardest-hit areas nearly two days after magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 tremors devastated parts of Caracas and surrounding areas.
The government estimated 172 remained trapped under the rubble on top of 920 confirmed fatalities and 3,360 injuries. A website taking reports of the missing listed over 50,000 as of Friday afternoon.
The economic toll also came into view on Friday, with a UN report estimating direct damage from the quakes at about $6.7 billion. Reinsurance broker Guy Carpenter said the gap between economic and insured losses is likely to be “quite large.”
Moron, near the epicenter, was still without electricity on Friday afternoon, the local fire chief told Reuters.
A transmission line outage was slowing efforts to have full service restored at a key port, a refinery and a petrochemical complex, sources said on Friday.
EYES ON LA GUAIRA
Reuters witnesses traversed highways cracked by the quakes and passed dozens of buildings reduced to broken concrete and twisted metal. Some ruins were spray-painted with building names to help rescuers identify locations.
Traffic was heavy heading into the hardest-hit region of Venezuela's La Guaira state, both with official cars, including pickup trucks carrying soldiers, and what looked like private vehicles.
The quakes destroyed at least 100 buildings, including high-rise apartments, in La Guaira.
Residents digging through debris with their hands and improvised tools decried a lack of heavy equipment, while volunteers brought supplies on motorcycles from Caracas and Valencia.
Jennifer Palacios, 25, said the quakes struck when she briefly left her home in the city's eight-tower Hugo Chavez housing complex, named after Venezuela's late socialist leader, burying her 6-year-old son and five other relatives. Their fate remained unknown.
"It's the community that has managed to get people out alive," she said, sitting on a plastic chair in front of the rubble. "We need them to bring cranes to move the slabs. There are still people trapped."
INTERIM GOVERNMENT TESTED
Reuters witnesses observed people in Catia del Mar, a town in La Guaira, removing toilet paper, cooking oil, bread and other items from a damaged store.
Police, national guard and other officials did not intervene in the looting, based on what Reuters witnesses saw, but were directing traffic toward Caracas. Lawmaker Jorge Rodriguez, the head of Venezuela's national assembly, urged citizens earlier on Friday not to take aid to La Guaira themselves, but instead to give it to authorities, in a bid to keep roads clear for emergency vehicles.
The government of interim President Delcy Rodriguez, who took power after the United States captured her predecessor in January, has pledged a massive deployment of assistance and was shown on state television visiting La Guaira on Thursday.
Rodriguez, who said La Guaira state would be "militarized" to facilitate rescue work, thanked motorcycle caravans bringing supplies and said the government had distributed 2,600 tons of food.
A Reuters team saw police and national guard motorcycle patrols on the road to La Guaira's hard-hit Los Corales community.
Yet help was patchy on Friday, with firefighters, police, civil protection and the military on the streets in some places but absent or minimally present in others.
Lawyer Ricardo Trias, 73, was trying to obtain a death certificate for his godson Armando Lopez, 54, whose body was pulled from the rubble of his building in the town of Caraballeda on Thursday night and remains at the site.
"We want them to give us the body...we can't take it and here it will rot," said Trias. "No forensic authority has come."
The disaster could have political consequences for Rodriguez, who has sought to portray herself as an agent of political change even though she served as vice president to the ousted Nicolas Maduro.
Venezuela's oil production level was not affected by the quakes, with output at 1.2 million barrels a day, oil minister Paula Henao said in a radio interview on Friday. She added that authorities were assessing fuel stocks, but fuel and gasoline distribution would be guaranteed to people.
Oil executives and workers in Venezuela's energy sector said the sector had escaped major infrastructure damage, but power outages and port delays are expected to curtail oil output.
WORLD RALLIES
Foreign rescue teams - including some from countries that have opposed Venezuela during decades of international isolation, political repression and economic deterioration - began arriving late on Thursday and into Friday, with a small contingent from the Dominican Republic the first to reach La Guaira.
Mexico, Colombia, India and Spain were among countries that sent in rescue teams, supplies and equipment.
The U.S. said it was mobilizing $150 million in aid and easing sanctions while the U.S. military dispatched two ships and said helicopters and aircraft would support rescue efforts.
In Los Corales, 50 people from El Salvador's team were assessing the ruins of three 10-story-tall buildings using drones, heat scanners and dogs to locate possible survivors.
“People have told us they can hear people. They call them on the phone and they answer, and they can hear people screaming and calling," said Dr. Roberto Gavidia, the head of the team, which has also worked in Haiti and Turkey.
The team had yet to find any survivors.
NATION UNDER STRAIN
The quakes struck a nation already weakened by decades of economic and political turmoil that has impoverished residents, driven millions abroad and eroded basic infrastructure and services.
"My building is uninhabitable and now I have nothing. It’s just me and my son, and I have no family in the country," said Suhayl Sarquiz, 50, who lost her job a few months ago.
The U.S. Geological Survey estimated more than 10,000 deaths were possible, which would place the quakes among the deadliest earthquakes in Latin America in the last century.
Nearly 7 million people could be affected, said the U.N.'s migration body, which was supplying emergency shelter and other relief supplies.
(Reporting by Vivian Sequera in La Guaira and Mayela Armas in Caracas, Additional reporting by Deisy Buitrago in Caracas, Tibisay Romero in Moron, Reuters TV in La Guaira, Aida Pelaez-Fernandez in Barcelona, Fabiola Arambulo in Mexico City and Reuters bureaux around the world; Writing by David Latona, Andrew Cawthorne, Julia Symmes Cobb, and Brendan O'Boyle; Editing by Jon Boyle and Deepa Babington)
