Government Negligence and Building Failures

Cancer is loud when it enters our lives We built the Jack and Cheryl Mooorris Cancer Center, so cancer doesn't get the last word. The Jack and Cheryl Moores Cancer Center, New Jersey's only fre standing cancer hospital to Silence Cancer. R WJ Barnabas Health and Rutgers Cancer Institute, the state's only NCI designated comprehensive cancer center Rwjbh d. org slash Morris Cancer Center From the New York Times, I'm Natalie Kitrof This is the daily Oa Carlos Wh d would you would come that to? B old tooy completeed Last week, after two massive earthquakes struck Venezuela, my colleague Carlos Prieto, started calling people there. Okay, perfect, Iar Carlos is from Venezuela He spent his childhood in the capital, Caracas When he started to see pictures and videos of the damage, he realized he couldn't even recognize parts of his hometown So we asked people how it all started. I was actually at my best friend's house and I was going back to my house. Natasha Villa was driving when the ground started to move And I started feeling my car just sliding from side to side I thought that it was the feeling of when you're Driving on top of water So you feel like the car is just sliding. You could see people screaming and running out of the street. You could see the light post and the electrical post falling down in the street and the people screaming while the electricity sparkles were just going everywhere She had no idea how extensive the damage was I didn't have signal in my phone at all because the network had fallen completely. With power outages all over the country and phone lines collapsed. There was no way to communicate with my friends. Much of Venezuela didn't know either I had no idea what was happening. so I waited for a friend who had a car and we drove around the city trying to find a signal. Carlos Yolambi is a comedian. He was supposed to perform at a standup show that night. So yeah, once we found the signal, When he finally got access to the internet, he couldn't believe what was coming up on his phone. What was the first thing that you saw? The first thing I saw was like some buildings collapse and we have some friends who live next to the first building that fell off in Caragas likeike, hey, our friend is alive, but Probably a lot of people in the building next to him or not. And then he saw more. thenen as we check the news We said, okay, so That was not the only building that fell He saw building after building collapse in Caracas But nothing prepared him for what had happened in La Guida, a state on the country's northern coast. And then we saw La Guida big It was T much on pho G of a min know C I moved to Ior rental for Milat As more and more images trickled out, a horrific picture of ruin began to emerge Lag Guaida is normally a popular vacation spot But now entire blocks had turned to rubble Thousands and thousands of people were looking for their loved ones The first thing I thought was The city is lost justust today I went over to the Domingo Luciani Hospital where I saw with my Oh eyes The level of devastation I saw Talks, pickup talks carrying patients directly from Nida, there was a four year old girl that had her pelvis exposed I was arriving at the same time and I was there . Mister There's no way to describe it today. We look at how Venezuelans united after the earthquakes and talk to our colleague, Anatoly Kermanayev from Lag Guaida, about how the aftermath of the tragedy has forced the Trump administration to shift its plans in Venezuela. It's Thursday, july second. H Anatoi, you got to Venezuela on Sunday and you've been spending a lot of time in the part of the country most affected by these earthquakes, which is Lag Guida Tell me what you've seen So Laguaya is a gateway to Venezuela. It's this town outside of Capital Caracas and I have driven there hundreds of times This is N itOA, this is Monday afternoon. And I'm sitting in the back of a passenger car Earlily this week I made this drive again and it was a very different drive this time O whileow the line There was a lot of traffic, There was a lot of people going down into the city. Font is a pickup truck loaded up with mattresses. Motorbikes and cars, trucks Carrying supplies, carrying water, just past a motorbike driver with just a small bag full off er It was quite unusual sides, but apart from that, everything around you look er much the same, the same as always. We answer like Vira And it wasn't until you get into the city itself that you start to see widespread destruction Wow This is the first high rise. Badly damaged that that I've seen. Blocks just entirely leveled. W, the walls are blown out God broken leftifts ' possessions, just hanging out. And it's the sort of seeming apparent randomness of it, right that one block could be completely unscathed, even the glass and the paint is still there. and then the next you know a few meters down the road is just completely leveled buildings itting at the top of a collapsed building. And when you When you approached a district building, the first thing that hits you is the smell, the smell of rot the putrification. It was just very clear smell of decayed flesh. Wow, dozens of people around me have diggen through in various partots Hoping to find someone You know, I have been a foreign correspondent for many years and I have covered a lot of unrest. I haveve been around death, but I have never covered it natural disaster of the scale and I have never really thought about how deaath smells and this was very much it. like this was very clear to me that this is what's Def smells like. sitting on the side of a colloapsed It lar residential building. There were people digging through pretty much every collapsed building. A few relatives standing on the side of a road because they resign. The earthquke happened a few days before I arrived, so the chances of finding someone alive have faded a lot by the time I was there. It's a lone excavator Takeaking for Rbo it feels a bit compulside like taken out a glass of sand from the beach What do we know about the numbers, Anatoly, of the dead and of the missing? Where does that stand right now So the official death toll is around two thousand people by now and yesterday the government suggested that it could rise to about ten thousand. Wow. There are no reliable estimates of missing, but some know the crowd sourcing platforms put the number at about fifty thousand. We should not take that too seriously. there's a lot of caveats here, you know But I think It is not unlikely that the number of deaths will end up being in five digits. Okay So Really heavy, just a horrific scene What is your understanding of how this happened, of what led to the scale of destruction and of death So first of all matterly, Vs were very powerful earthquakes, objectively powerful. that would have caused destruction in many places around the world, if not most. These were twin earthquakes, very unusual set of circumstances, and they also occurred during a public holiday. This was like an unusually very busy time for the area that ended up suffering the most So Widespread destruction and Daath was perhaps unavoidable But there are growing questions being asked whether dececisions made by the government have contributed to the destruction Many of the destroyed buildings, or many of buildings vats appear to have cost the most death have been social housing been very rapidly built in the last fifteen, twenty years to meet political objectives. They were basically built around election tim to garner votes and there's growing indications that corners were cut builduing v buildings. This was under Nicholas Maduro, the previous president of Venezuela. This was under Nicholas Madur, but this was primarily under his predecessor, Uga Chavez, who won numerous elections by gaining the support of Venezuela's poor Venezuela's majority. and his flagship project was somethingomet called Grand Michon de Viiende, the the Grand housing project, which involves constructions of thousands of buildings, thousands of social housing blocks around the country, which were then given out to Venezuela's poor And many of these buildings have colloapsed Okay, so there are questions over whether that strategy led by Chavez continued under Maduro may have created the conditions for this level of destruction. Yeah. I mean, you know, Venezuela has a history of heavy seismic activity. this is an earthquake prone zone. This is not a secret. and statistical models have predicted a strong earthquake here for some years This is a country that should have been prepared. and to be fair, many buildings have with stoods, the earthquake very well inside neighborhoods have sort of came out of this pretty much unscathed. construction engineering reasons coming from decisions taken by Uga Chavez and Nicholas Maduro Bods There were also decisions taken by the country's current leader, Delsa Rodriguez that have contributed to the ineffective response What do you mean by that Before Th Sirod Drigis became the leader of a government, She has been a long term official O this regime she has really risen in the ranks of governments under Nicholas Maduro who made her his I come I make troubleshoot giing her responsibility for the country's oil industry with the job of helping him. stustain power And She has orchestrated This Great. Shift from the socialist principles that have powered the ruling movement since its foundation towards this Laser fare, hands off Economic approach more of an open market. more of an open market and this is what it looks like in practice. under Uga Chavez, the state had lavish citizens with goods and services in retn for political loyalties. There was free food, free housing, subsidized travel all sorts of social benefits for any aspect of your life you can imagine, for education for your house pets, for the elderly, for university students, etca, etcet. And this was a time of plants in the country, oil prices were high. oil experts were earning the country billions and billions of dollars. and G Chabis could afford that Th the oil prices collapse in twenty fourteen American sanctions start strangling the country's economy, and this becomes no longer sustainable. And Delsea, as Nicolas Maduro's economic chief makes the decision retreat the state from people's lives So the Venezuelan states gradually stops providing basic services that they have for many decades. People are left on their own to fend for themselves. You know in Russia, we have a saying the survival of a drowning is the business of a drowning. and this is what Delsea instituted. Um, So you guys have the best saying And in return, the government gave them some breathing space to do that. So it stopped harassing businesses. By and large, it stopped the expropriations, it loosened currency control. It just made it easier for people to go about their daily lives, right? It's unleashed in a way market forces of supply and demand to try to fill in the gaps left by the retreating states And it did not create this massive banan. it did not create a Dubai out of Caracas, but it did make people's lives. significantly easier, know, But there was a cost to that. There was in a way, a hidden cost because The retreat of a state meant that the state no longer was in charge of providing basic services like like telecommunications or even electricity in some cases, the state shrank, the state hollowed out. It was everyone was for themselves And that was fine at the times of relative stability because people's entrepreneurship, private initiatives could help people get by. But when a natural disaster strikes and it requires a mass coordinated state response The shortcomings of her policies became very much apparent You're saying that under Chavez and then Maduro, obviously it was by no means perfect, but all of the resources were under the control of the government. And so if the government needed to move quickly to respond to something like a disaster, you'd imagine it could. And then the move under DCa to a more open market system It kind of splits these state functions up and they retreat from providing the services that you need when something like this happens. That's exactly what happened. And there's also a second reason Maduro especially in his last years in power as he became increasingly unpopular. He became increasingly paranoid. He was worried about coups, he was worried about rebellions, anything that contopv from power. And he became very distrustful of his own government, peopleople who could organize and push him out from power. So He started atomizing Venezuelan state and by this, I mean he split it into little feieve doms controlled by different officials, who enrich themselves. and none of them are able to communicate with each other or organize with each other. And this makes it very difficult to organize a coup But it also in circumstances like now makes it very difficult for all these differentere institutions, the police, the military, the civil prrotection services, the healthcare system, etceta too get together to coordinate and do something together. This is precisely what is needed during an earthquake. And instead we just have all these small groups of People running around aimlessly because there's nothing that ties them together Okay. so basically both of these things, the economic shift and the political paranoia of Maduro lead to a very disorganized state And then we get this other massive shift, as we all know, when the United States goes in under Trump and extracts Maduro earlier this year Talk about and how it affected what we're seeing now. This made things even more complicated. becausecause now It's not Delsei who ultimately made decisions in Venezuela and it is Washington, It is this Trump administration. So it adds another layer of decision making, another layer of bureaucracy, and complicated the chain of commands. and this is not what you want during a disaster response. Just explain what you mean when you say that It's the Trump administration making decisions So Natalie, the strange thing about this is basically exactly what it sounds like. You know, this is one of his rare things. this is not a metaphor The US has direct control of Venezuela's public revenues The U.S. has massive influence over Venezua's political systems, over its economic decisions. So it is literally Markar Rubio, U. S. Secretary of States and his team that make everyday decisions how Venezuela is run and what happens in Venezuela, what stances it takes That is just so wild that set up totally unimaginable, even, you know Six months ago. Yeah, it was Natalally was definitely something I could not have imagined. You know, yesterday I was in Lag Guira and for part of the day I was in the airports in the country's airport, which has been damaged. There's no commercial traffic, but there's a lot of aid supplies comeing in there. And this is also where US military set up its base There was this really bizarre scene that I witnessed of a senior Venezuelan security official, aan called Granco Artiaga, who has been U S neemesis you know man he's a man accused of gross human rights violation, torture, killing of political opponents. and he has been sold by U. S. governments for many years. And here he was standing and calmly looking on U. S military helicopters taken on and off from an airport. a few hundred yards in front of him and it was it was just so surreal to see U.S. military power, which has been you know the nemesis of Venezuelan government for decades for decades, just having complete free reign. On Venezuelan airfield in front of me Okay, you're getting at this right now, but How does this new government structure in Venezuela and the partnership with the US affect the response to these quakes? Some many of the quakes hits V Government is course completely flatfooted. It is unclear what's happening And For the first twenty four hours, which are the crucial hours, the hours where you most likely had to find survivors There iss no organized response, very little of organized response seen very little Heavy machinery on the streets. we see seen very little you organized groups of civil servants, you know sort of very sporadic statements from a government And People feel completely abandoned. People feel on their own and they have no choice but to take matters into their own hands We'll be right back Cancer is loud when it enters our lives We built the Jack and Cheryl Morris Cancer Center, so cancer doesn't get the last word The Jack and Cheryl Moois Cancer Center, New Jersey's only free standing cancer hospital. to Silence Cancer. RWJ Barnabas Health and Rutgers Cancer Institute, the state's only NCI designated comprehensive canancer center RwJbh d. org slash Morris Cancer Center This podcast is supported by American Beverage. When it comes to what your family eats and drinks, you know facts are the first ingredient. That's why America's beverage companies are sharing clear information about the ingredients in their beverages at good tonowfacts. orgot For over one hundred forty ingredients, you can find common uses, alternative names, and safety assessments from food safety authorities around the world Good to Knowfacts dot org is meant to be a first stop to learn more about your favorite beverages. No spin, no judgment, just facts. Visit good tonowfacts d. org New York. If your AC is always turned up, well your energy bills will go up too. Luckily, we've got ways to help. Try our personalized energy savings tips or explore budget billing, which helps to spread out your biggest payments Visit Ced d. com slash bill helpp to get started because taking control is New York In first twenty four hours after the earthquake that we started sending food directly to Lauaida They were Practically no rescue missions There were no military on the street. There were no police officers. There was no help. There were so many places where the people were screaming from inside of the rubble. But there was absolutely nothing that they could do because there was no machinery I know of a friend that she spent those forty eight hours. Looking at the rubble where her father was buried And there was no one there to help Everyone that our producer, Carlos talked to They couldn't sit still as all this was happening. I went to a store and bought. So they started either sending food or supplies down the stretch of highway to La Guaida or going there themselves to help in any way they could Every day we woake up and went down to give it to the people that were working on the phone Often, they were the first people that survivors had seen I'm curious if there has been a moment where you've noticed that maybe you are the first person that someone there has seen Come for help make it many U So many families have suffered. So many people s out manyany days without talking to their families So many people have lost everything I'm you They were just happy to be alive to sayve maybe one of their kids What have they told you When they see you Iazing you maybe talk with someone for less than five minutes And when you're going to say that bye, J you say goodbye with a hw L It just feel so Rel. A lot of people from abroad started messenaging me asking me to reach their families like the mom of one of our Bran in Argentina was missing? he started like asking, Hey, if you know any info about my mom, please let us know Carlos, the comedian, got multiple calls from people begging him to help locate their loved ones. Tw friends had the same plea Could he help them find their mothers who'd gone missing in Lag Guida? So We went on two motorcycles wee. So Carlos and a few friends got on their motorcycles and headed toward the worst of the earthquake tri to find To mums So we Try to reach for the first month But When we actually reach the building and the building btely collapsse Do you think that She didn't make it Yeah, I would say so I would say is the the most probable case and like the person Like she kind of knows it Like she kind of knows it that it's a long shot. so But When we reach these places, like the people told us Hey, nobody's coming here and We see that there is nobody around Most civilians helping In those places are the civilians that live in those places. Anatoly, in the last few days, our colleague, daily producer, Carlos Prieto, has been talking to people who are doing just what you said, actively jumping in as volunteers with no experience, just mounting their own pretty incredible rescue efforts. to me high level about that civilian effort. What is the scale and scope of it Mal, it's nothing sort of remarkable and simply overwhelming, would not call it a silver lining given the scale of a human tragedy, but to see Every single m saw in new meeds contributing something jumping in has literally brought like tears to my eyes, you know, it's V the universality of this effort the rich, the poor, just all cooking food, delivering supplies dononating, you know, open up our houses, providing transports, digging through the rebel has been remarkable. and you know, naturally like We have been foreign correspondents for many years. We have covered a lot of authoritarian governments. and the rule book of all these autocrats is to atom my society. Totally to divide the society, to turn it into this isolated pockets that are unable to stand together, unable to do any collective action, including change in the governments, right? This is how Putin works, this is how Maduro works And this is a government that has been in power for more twenty years and it has systematically undermined people's ability to make their voice counts. And the way people here have responded, the way they have come together. So something meaningful has been Asolutelywhelming. You're saying basically that strategy didn't work because here people are gathering in this way The strategy didn't work and you know, obviously it's a testament to the will of his own people But at the end of the day, these are just regular people Facing. a massive catastrophe and they are putting band aids at a massive problem that will not be solved without organized state involvement Once that organized state involvement comes, I assume it does start to materialize at some point. what did it look like It is beginning to materialize, Natalie. You know financial aid is flowing in, supplies are flowing in. There's a growing number of international volunteers, servicemen who are helping out. There's talk of multilater organizations, providing loans, providing financing. And by this stage, Natalie, we are no longer really talking about search and rescue by and large. Were talking longer term reconstruction And what about the partnership, this now very close collaboration with the United States? that It did. It absolutely dead I think it would be fair to say that for all the questions that exist about U S. Venezuelan relations today, questions that have to do with morality, national sovereignty, international law It is very clear that without US involvement, the situation on the ground would have been even worse It has flown in a lot of supplies. Its logistical muscles, the use of transport, helicopters, et cetera has been very important. Today, the already nine hundred American soldiers on the ground Venezuela helping the recovery efforts. The U. S has already committed three hundred million dollars of aid to Venezuela. US is pushing to reintegrate Venezuela into international organizations that can provide long term lending. So there's absolutely questions about whether the U.S could do more, but in absolute terms, its response has been significant. And that significant response I'd imagine has the Trump administration deepening its connection to the current government Absolutely. My reporting shows that after the earthquake, the U. S. has communicated to Delsa Rodrigz that they are all in, that they have made a betat on her, they have made a bet on this alliance and they are going to lean into it. U. S. officials have lavish praise on Delsea and you her response repeatedly in public statements. Just yesterday, the U.S government said in a statement that Venicean government has agreed to all of their requests that they had after the earthquake, which is very interesting because it implies that the decisions are made by the U.S. government and it's Venezuelans who just approve the decisions that have been taken. One of the Perhaps unexpected consequences of this earthquake is this alliance has become a lot deeper in the last few days. What are the implications of that This matters because the U.S is working with a government that they themselves have labeled as illegitimate. They have labeled it as sponsors of what they call narco terrorism, a government that has stolen elections. Until the earthquake, the US plan as articulated repeatedly by Seret of Steric Michikeel Rubio involved three stages First the recovery of Venezelan economy stabilization of its political system and transition, which means political transitions basically enabling free elections. And after the earthquake, Gubio himself admitsed that the catastrophe complicates this plan, makes it more difficult. This is something that they didn't plan for. This is something they could not have planned for. And in practical terms, the current situations makes it harder to imagine free elections in any foreseeable future makes it difficult to imagine Venezuela really recovering their democracy and recovering their political voice Okay, so I have to ask what is the Venezuelan opposition saying about this post earthquake phase where maybe elections are being kicked even further down the road? So the earthquakes have put the forces opposed to the government of Delca Rodrigz in a very difficult position ' in a lose, lose situation because On the one hand, if I stand aside they are basically watching US deepening their alliance with their sworn enemies and pushing the can of elections down the road At the same time, if they use the earthquake as an opportunityity to reinert themselves into Vinzuoa's political lives They face accusations of opportunism, politizations of disaster, and of basically staging political stunts And This dilemma is particularly acute for the leader of a Venezuela position, Marie Karina Machado, a Nobel Peace Prize laaureate. She remains the most popular politicians in the country. She is a person who would undoubtedly win elections if I were held tomorrow. But she's in exile. She left Minoua last year to receive that prize and she has been unable to come back since So She is now watching from outside the country as the US makes their bed with Delsea Rodriguez. And frankly, you know, as a Venezuelan person, she is watching the tremendous suffering of her citizens. and naturally she wants to be involved. She wants to help. And she has been trying to come back She does not have a valid passport. her Venezuelan passport has expired. So she needs US. help to get into the country. And she has been making increasingly forceful public please to aid her return. She's saying to the U S. help me get back in there. I want to help That's exactly what she's been saying. and her please to the U.S massively backfired because They US administrations, they see her as a destruction. They have moved from privately expressing an annoyance over her please to now publicly saying that her campaign to return to the country is a political stunt. because they say we remain focused on reconstruction, We remain focused on aidS And the U.S. government for now has bore into the arguments of Venezuelan government that allowing the opposition back into the country which just stoke social tensions, could create violence, could create unrest. This is not something that US. government wants to see in Venezuela right now So the long and short of it is that this tragedy obviously has very high political stakes on all sides The opposition wants to use this as an opportunity to assert itself For Delssea Rodriguez, this is a chance to solidify its ties with the U S even more and to presumably try to show that she's a competent leader in the worst of times But also for the United States, this feels like an important moment. I mean, President Trump has touted what he's done in Venezuela as this huge win. He's based a lot of his foreign policy on what he sees as his success there And here is this event maybe Putting that idea to the test Winston Churchill once said, never let a good crisis go to waste. and there's so much at stake for everyone involved for Dela Rodrigas Either this crisis ends up tumbling her government or she ends up establishing her legitimacy, ends up establishing herself as the powerful rule of Venezuela. For the opposition, either they reinert themselves into Venezuelan political life and use the discent with government response to take power or they fade into ocurity in exile. And for the Trump administration This is a crucial test. of a narrative that the Vinon operation has been an unfettered success, that this has been the biggest foreign policy achievements of Trump's second term He has repeatedly said that Venezuela has now become a very happy country, that Venezuelans are dancing on the street. And the reality is that today Venezuelans are not dancing on the streets. Many of them are living on the streets, right? The images that are coming out of the country clash massively with the way that he has painted this relationship, right? So he now has to takeake action to create what he has been talking about, right? He now has to take ownership in a way for the situation in Venezuela. And what will happen in Venezuela in the next few months and years too a great extent will depend on the decisions that he will make in the coming weeks. What about For Venezuelans, I have to think that the stakes for them are much more urgent, life or death. The question is whether they can feel safe living in this country under the system given the response to this tragedy The strategy has Unleash a great amount of pain and suffering, but it has also made Venezuelans rediscover their voice and given them bravery to speak out. in Lag Guira, you see residents coming together to express their anger at government officials, to chase them out, to boo them There's a sense of confidence and at the same time a sense of anger and rage And it's anger at abandoned by the governments at this moment of great needs and at the corruption and competence that we've seen all around them But it's a trigger for The pain that they have experienced for the last twenty years living under this government, right? This is sort of like a cathartic moment in a way, right that everything has been bubbling up inside Venezuelan people for so many years that they have been afraid to say because of repression, because of lack of independent media, this is all now coming out. So Perhaps the greatest paradox of what we see in Minnesuela right now. is Vad. Wh the material conditions for elections and democracy are moving further away peopleople in power have more and more reasons to just kick the can down the road. The desire for democracy, the desire for political voice has ritten dramatically. People really want it. People are no longer willing to wait for it And I also think what we see now is Venezuelans rediscovering that they are not alone, that they're part of a larger community. I think, you know, this earthquake will have big consequences for Venezuelan society, for Venezuelan people as a whole because they have seen power of their collective action and what they can do together despite all the challenges Boy Anatoy Thank you so much Thanks as always So When you think about that mom, the first mom that you couldn't find, Were you We're afraid that you also might not find this other mom. Oh, of course But as we reach the place We went to the bus stop that is closest. T the house where she was seen And we have no signal, we have no way of knowing like the actual street because it goes up like to the slumps. So we ask somebody at this bus stop like, hey, where is this street? And they told us, Oh, it's right here. Wh are you looking for And we say her name And the man we ask tells us well yes, I'm her brother. Oh wow. Yeah. it was yeah, like too much luck. Like Yes, of course, I'm her brother. Do you want to come visitor? And we were like, yes, please we have to send a video to O friend And he took us to the home She was there. You about Siza. g support bers S and Lasa pass me elect. . T Oona it And she's okay She's okay. Yeah, she's okay There was just like no way to communicate But yeah She's okay. T hundred Langoi someent of tal. theyam Gasia for