patrick halloran: Hey, welcome to a very special episode of the Rescue Lab. ⁓ we got some some awesome guests on tonight. We are talking about the crisis in Venezuela. ⁓ we spoke to Armando Rivas prior with the fire rescue group who was helping out and there was ⁓ they were trying to get an ambulance down to Venezuela. That got me linked up with Jorge Inseniares here. Jorge, thank you so much for getting me in touch with Francisco and thank you for your help for for getting this together. Why don't you just give us a quick overview of of yourself and where things are at in Venezuela right now? Thank you, PJ. Thank you for the invitation. And I'm I'm a firefighter. Went to Fire Academy in nineteen ninety five with Francisco. So we have known each other for over thirty years. At the Central University of Venezuela. So Venezuela has both your firefighters based at university campuses. So most of the large universities have a fire department. So what we but you're going to college and getting your degree, you you get a chance to attend a fire academy. So in my case, ⁓ went to medical school in Venezuela and and after that I had a chance to work for the urban search and rescue team for the Venezuelan agency that will be the equivalent to FEMA. It's called Protección Civil. So after medical school has spent ⁓ two years with the urban search and rescue team responding to different earthquakes and disasters, El Salvador earthquake in two thousand and one, ⁓ Guatemala, Bolivia, Peru, ⁓ and in Venezuela itself. Moved to the US in two thousand three. I'm an emergency physician practicing in central Florida and I'm a combat search and rescue ⁓ flight surgeon, Patrick Space Force Base, ⁓ with ⁓ power rescue and ⁓ helicopters. Very cool. Very w I said we're gonna talk about that more later on, another episode. Francisco, we we wanna thank you for coming on. ⁓ you're currently with the Central Un University of ⁓ Venezuela Fire Department. What'd you give us a quick background about yourself? Yes. Thank you. For the opportunity to be here and share my experiences at this event with the rescue community that listen to you. As George said previously, I'm a volunteer for fire. Also I'm engineer. That's my career, I'm electronic engineer. I still ⁓ working on on my fire department. Primarily ⁓ training. ⁓ guest instructor in the Texas ⁓ Fire Academy, the TIC. Yeah. Yeah, it's cool. Yeah, the ⁓ but in the Spanish school. Okay. It's ⁓ it's ⁓ another another ⁓ program training that they have there. And well, I'm here to share my experiences with you. And we appreciate that. And that ⁓ we'll jump right into it. I know we originally had spoke last time we posted a video was about UCV or the ⁓ Central University of Venezuela Fire Department. And what, you know, from your end, what makes that organization so unique, the UCV? Okay. Well, I wouldn't call it unique. I certainly would call it special. Yeah. Our personal are university students or professionals. ⁓ that includes engineers from several fields and doctors, nurses, dentists, psychologists, and others. All are one hundred percent volunteer and they are a group composed mostly of young people between ages between twenty and thirty years. I would say the the one of the older is me. And but all they are driven by a a profound sense of service and desire to help others. And and so they handle technical rescue as well. Excuse me? They handle technical rescue as well? UCV? Of course. Yes, of course. So with with a group like that and and Jorge, you know, even on the side ⁓ on your side working with protection civil, ⁓ how do you especially for the U C V team, how do you build and maintain technical rescue capabilities with, you know, the volunteer model of younger people or college students. How does that work? Well, we understand that volunteers often have jobs and ⁓ are pers pursuing university degrees, but we yet to manage to maintain ⁓ twenty four hours, seven days a week and on call stuff. Okay. But but to ensure technical proficiency personal ⁓ the personal regularly undergoing trainings on weekends and brief refreshions sessions or training on new equipment are often conduced during non-called shift. And one ⁓ interesting thing that we have is that we have in professionals from different or diverse fields and that's allows some members to specialize in specific areas and share that knowledge with the rest of of the team. In short, we we aim for training to be delivered by our own personnel. or at least organized by our institution using our own instructors, but often in collaboration with instructors from other organizations. And of course thanks to ⁓ thanks to internet we stay informed about changes, trends, new products, new protocols and more. And how often does the team train technical rescue? Well, I could say that every weekend we have different kind of training. And sometimes it's about rescue, sometimes it's about ⁓ fire operations. It it depends. Yeah. And gentlemen, this is for both of you, you know, n not only the Bombos, the Bombero C C V, but again, both of you, you know, there's a long history of disaster response in that area. ⁓ Mexico in eighty five, Fargas, nineteen ninety nine, El Salvador, Peru. What did you guys see in going to those operations? You know, what did you what were your experiences in dealing with that? Well, we we used to have a stronger team for over search and rescue and Venezuela was known in the past for the the rapid response that we had done. I'll give you an example. In El Salvador, and it's interesting how history goes around. So in El Salvador in 2001, we were on the field within 24 hours, working in an isolated area, probably two or three hours away from the capital city. So the Venezuelan task force ⁓ was there within 24 hours with two C one thirties and a full team including heavy rescue from Bomberos, Bomberos Suceve, Bomberos, Fi the Fire Department for Caracas, the capital city, civil protection. And now, over twenty five years later, El Salvador was one of the first teams on the ground. Before the US team, before most of the USAR teams, El Salvador was there first. So and now the c the capacity that we had as an orbital search and rescue team for the country has been Significantly diminished for lack of equipment and and not enough training. So Bombera Suceved since the 90s, since we responded to the earthquake in 90 in 85, but we responded not as a part of an organized orbital search and rescue team for the country. It was just out of the the desire to go help, but there was not an organized response. But since the nineties, ⁓ Francisco and I were part of the urban search and rescue team for the country. And we had an opportunity to to do training o on a monthly basis with other teams. And I think it's worth mentioning Grenca. Grenca is ⁓ is called Grupo Rescate Metropolitan. So Metropolitan Rescue Group. And it was founded by actually ⁓ subway employees when the when they were building the subway in the eighties, they decided that that that it was gonna be necessary to have a rescue team. So their their employees created this team and now they're like a leading rescue group not only for Venezuela, you can ask on all over Latin America, especially South America, and they were well known. And also they go they used to go to the TEAKS. Yes. Probably you have been to the Sasa City in TIECS right? They used to teach yeah, they they used to teach the the technical rescue for the Spanish training in in every summer. That's actually I I I never knew today I'm just learning. I didn't know there was a Spanish school at Teaks. I think that's really interesting. Yeah, it was one week I think August or July, Francisco. July, yeah. super yeah and so francisco the the UCV how big is that that fire department how big how big of a tech rescue team can you guys assemble? Well our organization is not a big one it's just like 100 far fighters. Yeah so we we are a small group but we tried that everyone in the group learn everything. So we don't have any particularly s specialized area. We try that everyone knows to how how to perform in every situation. And how big if you deploy to a disaster, how many people would go from from the U C V in in this case, in particular this case, the the airwake earthquake in La Guaira and Caracas, we were attending like eighty, eighty, ninety personnel because we we of course we we received the support from some far fires that are not active but but they help us with ⁓ logistic ⁓ issues. Yeah, I gotcha. I I do want to take a step back. I wanna I just want to look at your career for a second. You were talking about teaching antiques, you know, you've been in the fire service for over thirty years. What drew you to tech rescue early on? Okay. In my case I'm an engineer, yeah as as I mentioned before. So rescue is pretty similar to engineering about the how the things works and the principles behind and understand everything. So I feel some affinity with with this area of of fire operations. Yeah. And what ⁓ yeah, on the on the tech rescue team, do you do a lot of the like structural specialist work on the engineer side or is there something that you'd like to do as well? Like ⁓ rescue, breaching or breaking or like the planning. Do you guys have the do you have the same setup as sort of an American FEMA team where they have the different disciplines? Or you said everybody does everything? ⁓ no, no. Pretty much it's the same as as American team because it's based on on on FEMA and on Insarag guidelines. So pretty much we are the same. Of course I we have some specialized engineers, like civil engineers engineers, and they know a lot about structural risk. Gotcha. Take us back to the you know, the moment the earthquake happened, you know, in your experience and what you what you realized was happening and the scale of what you were facing. Well the the the earthquake struck on a on a holiday at 6 p.m. and just some minutes before an ⁓ World Cup match. So a great a great amount of people were at home. Yeah. That was ⁓ the case for me as well. I have experienced several low to moderate intensity earthquakes in my life. That's because my country and my city, they are near an active fault system, yeah, where the Caribbean and South American tectonic plates mate. Meet. Okay. So But the intensity on this event was unique. I felt ⁓ you know a violent shaking, send all almost all of my objects on high shelves to the floor immediately. The ⁓ sliding windows ⁓ in any direction possible from side to side. I can hear the a deep earth ⁓ shaking roar ⁓ sound from beneath the ground that was terrifying. My apartment, I live in a in a apartment in a in the sixth floor. Shock not not only in every horizontal direction, but also in vertical. As I I as if I were Yeah yeah. It's like the end it was the end and and that the building would collapse. So I I I huge to my mother, prayer to God, of course. Close my eyes and and wait. Wait. It lasted less than a minute, but but it feels like an eternity. And once the shaking stopped and and you say and you see and I saw the state of my my living room, I realized something serious, ⁓ very serious had happened. Quickly of course I grabbed my family emergency kit, my key documents, a phone and evacuated my mother from the building, help ⁓ two elderly elderly neighbors with mobility issues to get out as well. And once outside I use social media ⁓ and the the regular channels that we have to scale the situation to to get informed about the situation, which was rapidly becoming worse and worse and worse. Yeah. Jorge, where were you when it happened? Are you stateside? But I mean you obviously know you know, the the response side of this. What were your thoughts immediately when you s when you heard about this? Yeah, I was home and I was actually getting ready to go for a run. And ⁓ I'm a friend who was in Venezuela sent me a video of the one of the buildings in Caracas. ⁓ so there were a few buildings that collapsed in in the capital city. ⁓ most of the buildings were in La Wire. I when I saw as soon as I saw the building collapsing in Caracas, I knew immediately this this was the big one. And and I told my wife that we need to get get to work right. right away. Start making phone calls. Yeah. No I know absolutely. So I mean and you n I mean obviously you know a ton of people down there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I can only I can only imagine. So, you know, we have we have a foundation that we created ⁓ twelve years ago as a U C V Firefighters Foundation. Yep. And it's it's a way to help not only ⁓ the U C V firefighters but only all other volunteer firefighters and rescue teams down in Venezuela. Perfect. So so we knew we needed to get busy. My first phone call was to the fire chief of Umberos Ucebe. ⁓ the second phone call was to ⁓ assist a foundation that it's the program for humanitarian aid in Venezuela. They're the ones who who got the funding for the ambulance by the way. And and the third phone call was to our local vendors in Venezuela. Because we we knew we needed more equipment right away. So I needed to know what What do you guys have on the ground right away to start providing the teams with the equipment that they're needing? So and luckily they did have some some significant amount of equipment that we were able to buy and have it in the hands of our firefighters within twenty four hours. Wow, that's awesome. Yeah, and and ⁓ Francisco, those first twenty four hours, you know, walk us through what the the bomberos did, you know, how were the teams mobilized, what were the priorities, you know, and where were where were resources assigned? Well, ⁓ most of our personal ⁓ live within the the the city of Caracas itself. So when when we follow the full magnitude and duration of this earthquake, which was actually two earthquakes one after another, in the immediate aftermath there is always a sense of uncertainty. You know that such force must have caused serious damage in some places. Okay. Though they really ⁓ turn out to be far worse than we initially imagined. ⁓ we managed several communication channels at our station, but the fastest method provided provided to be proved to be the WhatsApp, the WhatsApp group. And through it, everyone reported as best they could their geographic location, their physical condition, general health, and their estimated time to arrival at the at the fire station. Simultaneous simultaneously the duty crew established a a situational route. to assess the status of our personal and our operational response capability. Our staff consists of university students as as I mentioned before. And this situational room or emergency operations center, getting ⁓ begin to get information from other departments, official department, emergency management agencies like like civil protection, using ra ⁓ radio communication, VHF, UHA, as well as information from from news from the news, social media, Twitter, Instagram. And based on all this information, several action plans were formulated and when the available for fighter and resources and personnel arrived, we dispatched this to several affected areas of fort in Caracas because we have at least six residential buildings that had completely collapsed. Okay. We were to one one of in my case, we went to Al Paraíso area. This was a building of twelve floors approximately and was completely completely collapsed. Okay. The airquake struck like at 6 PM and by HPM a large number of our fighter and rescue workers were already on site and working in Caracas. Okay. I I was taken by surprise when at at least at 2 a.m we were ordered to leave the building. But it that that don't have ⁓ at the moment that doesn't have any sense for me because we we we just ⁓ we have a lot of of work to do there. But when I asked the reason, I was informed that we have to return to the station and prepare a massive deployment to La Guayra, because the reports indicated hundreds of several damages buildings and at least one hundred buildings that had completely collapsed. requiring the bulk of all available personnel from every fire department and rescue agency to concentrate the efforts in in that area. I mean I I've only seen the pictures, but being on the ground in those early those early hours, I mean what did that operating environment look like for the rescuers? Okay. Well by early morning we arrived in La Guaira, okay? ⁓ upon reaching cer certain areas like Los Corrales, Carapayeda, Caribe, to the east. and Katia Lamar to the whist, the landscape was like apocalyptic. Okay? There were entire blocks of massive reinforced concrete building twelve to fourteen stories high and multi tower condominium complexes that had completely collapsed in w in in any ways described in user and user manuals. But but primarily through vertical pancake collapse on some one some Some of them with lateral displacement also. There was also builds that had sunk into their underground parking levels. Some of the buildings that had a pivot on their bases and and topless sideways like when like a fellet tree, you know? And some structures where ⁓ the upper floors had collapsed completely while the lower floors remained standing but extremely un unstable. So the the atmosphere was chaotic, heavy. pile of of rubble that had s that had once been a a building was ⁓ was full of civilians trying to rescue family members and friends or even strangers using only their own resources, the the the the bare hands. The number of collapsed buildings was so so vast that during those initial hours there were no firefighter or rescue personnel present at many of of these sites. To assist with the rescue effort. It's amazing. I mean, just the sheer magnitude of it. I mean, Jorge, you you you've operated in in environments like this. What is it like? I mean, you're you've done this forever, but what is it still like when you come across a scene like this? It's ⁓ this one is beyond anything that I have seen in my career. It's actually the worst disaster in the entire region for the last fifty years. So there's nothing that you compare it with. Nothing not on the civilian of a search and rescue or on the military response. ⁓ is i and as Francisco said, it's like an apocalyptic scene. Yeah. Keep in mind that the first twenty four hours for La Guaira, when we talk about La Guaira, ⁓ Caracas is a valley surrounded by a mountain. So the north side of that mountain that makes Caracas is is La Guaira. So it's about thirty five to forty minutes away from Caracas. So those poor families and survivors, they have to do the most of the rescues for a a good twenty four hour period. Because even with the local fire response and the local search and rescue teams, the magnitude was so big that it there was not enough resources for that response. So we to answer your question, I had never seen anything like that before. You know, we o we often talk about at least on here, but As far as training goes, training for large scale scenarios like this, you can never really replicate the stress of what that actually looks like. I mean, how do you how do you train how do you train for something like this? There is no training for something like this. I mean, if we we saw what we went through for the World Trade Center and it was what, six, seven buildings, eight buildings. Here we're talking about a hundred and fifty to two hundred collapsed buildings and it it was not. two or three stories. It's we're talking about twelve, fourteen story buildings com fully collapsed. Yeah, and the videos were just amazing, you know, what these what these buildings were doing, they collapsed. Francisco, when you actually got on scene and, you know, tell us about one of the rescues from beginning to the end and how, you know, how was that victim located? What how did you come up with the rescue plan and how was that operation carried out? Okay. Okay. ⁓ I I would talk one ⁓ of this ⁓ this is also the the more technical challenge rescue that ⁓ I was involved and and and I have to make some some to change the rescue plan several times in in this one. Okay? Yeah. Well we arrived at a Los Corrales building in Los Corrales area. At the scene we found the parents of of of ⁓ two children who had been inside the building when it collapsed but the apartment was on one of the upper floors. Okay, but the parents had had been outside at the time of the earthquake and and were the ones who confirmed the the children's presence in in in the building, okay? Okay. And of course they help us to identify the the the area of that building where they they were located. Okay. The building have suffered a pancake collapse with a slight lateral shift. drilling into one of the debris one side to reach an apartment. Meanwhile another rescue group and my team took advantage of a of a fracture and a hole in the concrete slab to attempt a second horizontal tunnel f ⁓ from a different area. Okay. ⁓ Once the first layer was breached, ⁓ we gained access to the space between the two slabs. Okay. It is was an an opening barely of fifty fifty centi c centimeter, okay, a half half meter. But heavy debris such as wall bricks block it or progress. However, using these calendars techniques, we confirm the presence of at least one survivor, a boy name angel angel, aged between twelve and fourteen years, I I I think so. Uh-huh. Who said he was trapped alongside with his young younger brother and he described having no room to move. So the rescue planning involved ⁓ opening horizontal tunnels from opposite directions to reach the void where the children were were trapped. We spent hours manually removing debris from the horizontal tunnels, but the material on bricks mortar was heavy and hard and the workspace between the slab was extremely small. So Barely one residual could fit inside. Okay. Accomplished by a a small wood for like a strut for safety. Although the process was slow, it minimized the the the risk for the children. And how long did that process take to get to them and get them out? Okay. As ⁓ as we cleared away the breeze, we reached a point where the tunnel could only accommodate three people lying down in a single file. We would pass the robot back. clearing it by hand or using a small electric rotary hammer until we ⁓ encounter beams and and columns. These reinforcement reinforced concrete structural elements were extremely difficult to break with the tools and and and the space where where where we were working. And giving the complex an exhausting position, we were forced to work in in like in ⁓ rotate teams every few minutes. This caused that our progress was almost zero, you know, almost to a high. Well ⁓ at eight PM for example, we have an an unexperien unexpected event that disrupted rescue that yeah a widespread panic broke out due to strong rumors about about a tsunami was approaching. Okay. Yeah, yes. Just for context, we we were working in a coastline just two hundred ⁓ three hundred meters away from the water. So we are pretty near the ocean. People began running in all directions in panic. Vehicles and motorcycles ⁓ speed up without yelling to pedestrian. Many groups abandoned the their tools and their side and were ordered to evacuate the area. For safety reasons the squad working with me, my my team from the fire department stayed together and we moved. Toward higher ground in the mountains, ⁓ moving as fast and quickly as we could. And once in a safe location, we tried many calls, making we tried to make calls to Caracas, but most networks would ⁓ tel telephone networks were down. Just one carrier still had voice service, not not data, just voice service. And I managed to call several people in Caracas asking them about to verify the tsunami reports through official national or international sources. And even with the confusion, with this this the confusion. The children's parents had stayed behind us. Wow. And pleading with us not to abandon their kids. That's yeah, yeah, yeah. That's absolutely wild. You're in an apocalyptic collapse area and you're now you're worried about tsunamis like it's unbelievable. That was very heartbroken, yeah, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fortunately, yeah. Once once we we We re the the report was confirmed that it was a false alarm. We returned to to the side and about one hour had passed and found that no one else was working on the ⁓ on this building. So we were the only ones there and we resumed the rescue operation. If everything was dark because everything was dark because there was no public power grid working. Okay? Now more than 26 hours had passed since the initial event, since the earthquake. And we have been working with in these tunnels for like ten hours. But during our ongoing conversation with the boy, we we evaluate our progress by asking if he could hear us drilling closer to or further away from him, for here in in or northern in or if we could see light when we pointed our flashlight to evaluate our progress. Okay. However, we began to notice that this that his speech was becoming Incoherent. Okay, that not makes sense for us. So we assuming that that we were assuming that his health was rapidly deteriorat deteriorating, and we realized that we need to act faster and alter our rescue actions. In this moment we decided to make another strategy. We begin with a vertical penetration as close as possible to the children. Okay, first we place it on a specific piece of of coat as far inside on on one of these horizontal tunnels as we could. So it would serve as a visual market when we wa began the vertical drilling. Then using some ropes we measure the direction and distance of the two tunnels to project the possible position onto the outermost slab and based it on this we mark the entry point where we began the vertical drilling. Once all the concrete at the access point was broken away, the ⁓ the metal reinforced bars were exposed and we began coating them with a four inches ⁓ angle grinder. But because there were so many large gauge bars, like one and and two inches, we quickly ran out of coating disk. Okay? Yeah. And since no other crews were working nearby, it took us nearly thirty minutes to obtain more discs from anyone who could possibly give us. Drilling, drilling through the slab generated a lot of heavy debris, such as brick fragments. So we had to clear the area before starting on the second slab. There was less in this second slab there was less less debris when drilling the tunnels. One side we could see the marker. Do you know that that particular wood marker that we we had placed it in one of the initial tunnels We were able to see it when when we were on the second slap. That confirmed that we were close to the original position. And we carefully drilled through that second slab and reached a voice. And upon inserting a hand through the opening, we we confirmed the presence of the voice that we were looking for. The angel. We quickly ⁓ wide ⁓ widened the hole as much as possible to insert a mobile phone. And record the position in which the boy was trapped. He was lying horizontally with barely any space between his body and the slab above. Yet he was not being crushed by anything. So we worked to widen the entire vertical tunnel, then proceed to extract his head and torso, and we fitted a tubular weaving harnesses around his chest to support his weight from the outside, while a for fire inside the tunnel helped to to free his leg. And another ⁓ another ⁓ far fire on the tunnel ⁓ entrance guided the upward movement to ensure it was slow and safe, preventing the guy the this boy were ⁓ were snaking on any structure. And when he was out, everyone present, you know, erupted in cheers and applause, offering word of encouragement to Angel. ⁓ far fires and rescue workers outside had already ⁓ ⁓ a backboard ready along with an ambulance waiting for the transport to the nearest hospital. This this took place at at 2 a.m. on july twenty sixth. So it it took for us like ⁓ like 14 hours to to to to complete this rescue or to complete this rescue. ⁓ but we immediately remembered that was another child in the area. So we proceed to inspect the site less than a meter away we could we could see an adult Embracing a small child, but they did not respond or calls. And when the rescuers touched them, they they realized tragically that that Rigor Mortis had already sent set in. So all this work was carried out in the dark, using light for a gasoline power generator with borrowed tools, because at the moment we don't have the the the right tools. The the borrowed tools were were were demolition hammer and grinder lent by a local builder. who lives in the in the neighbor. And a tsunami warning on top of everything. Yeah. Yeah. But it was a a fake n a fake alarm. Yeah. ⁓ Jorge, I you've operated in these environments, you know, and we train a lot of like the breaching breaking stuff that we're doing in these buildings that we train for, you know, we work on a clean clean versus dirty breaks or or breaches. How much of this really break comes down to just dirty breaching? Most of it. Most of the operations were dirty breaches. In ⁓ in ⁓ in the times that you've that you've worked in these environments. And it seems like a lot of the shoring, how does the shoring actually work in these situations? There's a lot of tunneling, is that really what it comes down to as well? Well, if you see some of the rescues, the last ⁓ rescue, day number eight from the ⁓ I think it was ⁓ it was one of the USR teams from the US. I don't wanna say which one because it's ⁓ I wanna give ⁓ the credit to who who deserves the credit. ⁓ but it was one of the FEMA user teams and ⁓ the Chilean team. They they had to use a significant amount of of struts and and and it was very technical. Yeah. It was a security guard that was at a at a basement of a building and he was like at a at at a small office and that's what made it ⁓ such a complicated rescue because they have to go into the basement and and it took Francisco, I don't know if you were around it when they did it, it took a significant amount of technical level to to get the the security guard out. That's wild. That's ⁓ I I just from the videos I've seen from people I talked to, it seems like tunneling is is the sort of the means. It obviously w which should maybe ⁓ taking the time to have to strut and do all that stuff is just gonna take more time and add to the operation. Yeah, they were using struts for that last rescue. Yeah. ⁓ we were hoping Because ⁓ from the experience in Haiti in two thousand ten there was ⁓ a sixteen year old that was rescued after f ⁓ fifteen days and I think Turkey in twenty twenty three they were able to get somebody alive at day day nineteen. So we were aiming as a team for at least fifteen days of having a chance to recover somebody, but it was at day eight when the last person was rescued alive. and the weather has a big factor here. Yep. The middle of the summer, high humidity, heat, so the chances were against those survivors. Right. Yeah, that makes sense. And Francisco, what was the what was your operational periods? I mean, that you that that the bomberos are working at the at this time. Frankly we work until we get tired. We we we have to to rescue these these children and we we didn't take any rotation teams because already they they knew where they ⁓ they are they there are any any people there for help as all also because the this tsunami alert we were working along these until complete the the mission. And ⁓ yeah so at some point the international U Tar USAR teams start to arrive to to assist. What's it like integrating with those international teams? You know, USA USA one comes along. Yeah how does that how does that work well working alongside them. On paper there was no formal integration as ⁓ because thus forces operate under INSER Act guidelines and they organize themselves according to instruction from the OSOC the the OSOC points in Venezuela. But in practice, however, sporadic ⁓ collaborations do occur. Much of the work I observed from these forces performing involves a technical search operation using systems like Delzar, Acoustic Sismic Sensor, and Kinine unit. And subsequently, once the the presence of living victims was confirmed, local rescue teams would be in drilling and breaching ⁓ doing the drilling and and breaching operation. Okay. And and Jorge, you talked about, you know, going to El Salvador. What's it like going into another country on a team and and trying to integrate into that disaster environment? It depends on the country, on the situation, and The particular case of El Salvador, it was the magnitude of was not as big as this one, but it it was spread across different areas of the country. So in that particular case, we we worked with the local population because there was it was very difficult to access this area. It was in the mountains and it was a small village. It was over ninety percent destroyed. So when we arrived there, we arrived to San Salvador and ⁓ and they have the emergency operations center. were distributing the international teams in different areas. So once we got there, it was mostly the locals in the task force working with us. All the disasters, we had great integration. Sometimes with the l with the country military. Like in Bolivia, we had a great experience with their military and the civilian search and rescue teams. Guatemala, it was mostly with with their military. So it varies from one country to the other. Yeah. No, I understand. Francisco, I I think Jorge brought up a good point ⁓ talking about the local rescuers and you had mentioned that, you know, you you also talked about how the big USAR ⁓ FEMA teams came in and they brought the the Delsar's and the Canines and those big ticket items that help. But how important is it, you know, those local rescue teams having that local knowledge? How important is that during these operations? Well, I I I think that the most important local knowledge di did not come from local first responders, but from survivors and local civilians. They provided they provide ⁓ in even for us, they provide information about the number of people trapped, their ⁓ the their approximate location, the floor level where we were ⁓ working, and the layout of the apartment. ⁓ sometimes they would even show a photo, a photograph of the building from before the earthquake. And and that information we ⁓ give us better situational awareness and And valuable formation for for a world. Yeah, no, that that's super important. I and I think that was used I know that's used in a lot of collapses, but like surfside most recently here in in the States. And I think the the mapping side of things is probably gonna get more and more is getting bigger. I don't know. If do you guys ever use in your side do you use like like SARCOP or Caltopo or any of those mapping USR software platforms? No. ⁓ no no for me. Not for me. We we use your we have s members that they they work with geographical s system positions and and they provide us from some aerial map with satellite images ⁓ that were already updated so we can ⁓ compare the before and the after the event. Right. Yeah. And that's I I know that's very important in the search. Francisco, you know, you working alongside these international teams, both when you've responded and when they've responded to you. What lessons do you think that USR teams around the world can learn from each other? Okay. ⁓ for me I think that ⁓ it's very important to teach to community about the first response. Okay. Why? Because they are really they are the first responders. Even even before so when the community is prepared for something like light risk, ⁓ you improve. the the amount of life that you can save. So my my advice is to improve the community pre partness. Okay. And Jorge, same question you what you know, from your experience, what should teams from the world how or what can they learn from each other? We we need to have more exercises between Orban Central Rescue teams and the regions to to get used to work together. in different environments. I think we need to strengthen the local teams and the regional teams because it's specifically for an earthquake and a collapse structure, time is is life, right? So some of the teams they they got to Venezuela five days later. And I understand when you're coming from Asia and Europe, ⁓ but i in to emphasize what Francisco said. In in the US we have CERT, right? We have the community emergency response teams. Which it varies from one state to the other. In in the south, especially in Florida, they have they have a lot of significance for hurricanes. And you see that they they do have a an important role during hurricanes, even if it's logistics. I think we need to use use our teams to train some of those local capabilities in into those communities and and develop an equivalent of cert for the entire region of of Latin America, South America. And the Caribbean. That's interesting. I want to touch on capabilities and ⁓ the limitations that the bomberos faced. What Francisco, what were the biggest limitations early on that you guys faced? Was it staffing, logistics, communications? What what really stood out? Yeah, ⁓ for for us transport and equipment for intermi intermediate level rescue operations was the the the the big ⁓ the big limitation. ⁓ internal communication logistics function at the way I'll personal ⁓ reported for duty, whether for search and rescue operation or for rows in the situational room. But our main ⁓ challenge was transporting personal, logistics, supplies, water food and tools to La Guaira. We had to borrow two buses and later receive assistance from an American ⁓ non governmental organization that provides us with the double cap pickup truck. ⁓ instantly we we worked ⁓ with this ⁓ in ⁓ non nongovernmental organization to recover the body of of an American citizen who was visiting the country and died in the earthquake. And yes, basically for us was tr ⁓ transport and equipment for intermediate label rescue operation. Yeah, PJ they work with ⁓ United United Cajun Navy. ⁓ yeah, okay. That is the NGO and they play they played a key role supporting the the recovery of the US citizen. That's it. Probably it was ⁓ two weeks after the earthquake, right? Yeah. ⁓ they were actually on the list ⁓ to talk to, so I will bring that up. I will talk to them. And Jorge, during this time, I know you guys were pushing the UCV ⁓ foundation. Can you tell us more about that? I know you broached it before, but you this was really ramping up and you know, what does that support provide and how does that support translate capability directly to the ground? So over the years we have concentrated obtaining donations from fire departments mostly in the US, some fire departments in Europe as well. And the foundation gets equipment donated and sends it to our ⁓ volunteer firefighters. Also we have a lot of emphasis on training. Good equipment without proper training is is not enough. So we have medical training that is an equivalent to pre hospital trauma life support. And and now of course we we're adding we're gonna add more into the technical rescue component and Francisco's gonna be a key part of it. So we we are a foundation created by firefighters and and people like my wife, who's the administrator who has who comes from the same university and in and we have a very small overhead because everybody's a hundred percent volunteer. So most of the donations go to buy equipment. for our firefighters. We we're in the process of shipping that ambulance. The US State Department is ⁓ donating the shipment and ⁓ now we're working with ⁓ f Global medic and global global fire in Canada and they're they're gonna do a large donation to our volunteer fire fire departments in Venezuela. That's awesome. So it's even though their earthquake it's been more than forty days, there are a lot of needs. ⁓ exactly. For the affected area. I mean, they have no services, no shelter. Mm-hmm. ⁓ we're working on feeding thousands of people on a daily basis. So that's a lot of need. Yeah. ⁓ and that's that's an important point you bring up. And Francisco, I was I was gonna ask you about that, is it i it has been nearly forty days, you know, since the earthquake. What does the mission look like on the ground right now? What what are what are you guys doing? What are the bomberos doing? What is that mission today? Well We're currently working on on recovery, but ⁓ perhaps hundreds remain under the rope. ⁓ but there are families who need to recover them to perform their rituals and begin their mourning and and find a closure to to this the sadly situation. So that that or ⁓ we're working on on that ⁓ current yeah, and I and I hurry, I think you touched about it. you guys are gonna be pushing to get 'cause you know, obviously once the cameras go away, all the big search and rescue stuff goes away, it's left it's left to the teams like the bomberos to to clean up and carry on. And the the foundation is going to be pushing to build that technical rescue capability for for early on. What what ho what are you hoping that those skills or or what are the most important skills that you want to impress upon the team or or push their way? Well, we have we want to have better equipment for ⁓ like ⁓ cameras, search cameras, ⁓ drones that have the infrared capabilities, more hydraulic equipment for intermediate and and heavy rescue. And also we have we want to emphasize the medical component, the care that those survivors are gonna get once they're pulled out of of the rubble. Speaking with many of the physicians and paramedics who work there were many, many people who suffer from crush syndrome and we even though we sent the protocols, they had the protocols for crush syndrome. One of the first things that I did is this is the power the Air Force Pirate Rescue Protocol for Crush Syndrome. They didn't have the tools right to be able to do it. Right. Yeah. That's so that's a very important fact. And yeah. So I I have a final question for both of you. Hore, I'll start with you. You know, for rescuers, you star people watching this From around the world, what lesson from Venezuela do you want them to take home with them? Well, as Francisco said, it doesn't matter which country. We have seen it in in Spain after the mud flights in Valencia last year. ⁓ this could happen to any country when it's this magnitude. We will rely on the first twenty four hours for the fr from the locals. So we need a strong prepared community. with local institutions who have the capability of training our communities on how to respond in the first twenty four hours because nothing nothing this magnitude will be able to be managed by any agency. It doesn't matter where you are from. So I think we need to to have better trained and better equipped communities who can work together with the local fire departments. And ⁓ all research and rescue teams, that part of the planning as a as an exercise has to be let's do the Venezuela scenario where there will be two hundred buildings and it doesn't matter how big your user team is, you will have to rely on the local capabilities of your community. Absolutely. Yeah, it I mean it it it almost seems like an out of this world case study so many buildings collapsing, but it it actually happened. It actually it actually happened. Yeah, it's yeah. It's unbelievable. And Francisco You know, you've you've been in this the firefighting industry for for thirty plus years dealing with disasters. Has this earthquake changed the way you think about rescue? Well, you know, you spend your whole life ⁓ preparing for an event like this, and when it happens, you realize that nature's destructive power far exceeds human capacity to respond, whatever the country, whatever the time. You reflect and come to understand that even with training and equipment you cannot save everyone you care about, but you can at least make a difference for us. Yeah. No, it's that's profound. And I I appreciate the time that both of you have given, you know, to come and talk to us today and help spread the awareness about what's what's still going on down there. And, you know, Francisco, you know, we wish you the best. From from all the USAR tech rescue people around the world, you know, we are with you still. ⁓ I know the cameras are gone, but we are still here. And Jorge The UCV Foundation, how can people help right now? Where can they go to to help the Baberos? If you can check our Instagram, UCV Firefighters, and our website is UCVfirefighters.org. There's a donor box click that you can help us out and a hundred percent of your money is gonna go to continue helping our firefighters and search and rescue teams in Venezuela. Thank you. Thank you. And Francisco, we hope to catch back up with you. you know, in in months from now and and see how you guys are doing and hopefully you're you're getting the support that you need and and we hope that you're well, my friend. Yeah. ⁓ many things ⁓ I I want to ⁓ take the opportunity to to to say thanks to the United States government and officials for all the support provided through their search and rescue task forces and all the humanitarian aid deployed by their military forces ⁓ and also the American non governmental ⁓ organization that continue in that that are con that are working are still at working providing shelter, food, water, medicine to those affected. And in general to the people in the United States for their support during this very difficult time for the Venezuelan people. God God bless you. Thank you. Absolutely. Gentlemen, thank you so much and we appreciate everyone watching on the Rescue Lab. We'll be back with more. Thank you.