A specialist team of British crisis-response volunteers heading to Venezuela to help after the devastating earthquake has been stuck in Madrid airport for more than 24 hours.
Serve On, a UK-based charity, has a team of 11 people and one dog trying to get to Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, after it was devastated by back-to-back high magnitude earthquakes on Wednesday.
The team possesses seismic and acoustic equipment that can sense movement of deeply buried victims, and their team leader, Vernon Young, told the Press Association they are desperate to get out to Venezuela “as soon as possible”.
The confirmed death toll from the 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude quakes surpassed 1,430 on Saturday, with at least 68,900 people reported as missing.
However, Simon Bolivar International Airport, the only international airport that serves Caracas, was also ravaged by the earthquakes, so travel into the country is “severely affected”.
Mr Young, 57, who has responded to disasters in the British Virgin Islands, Turkey and Syria during 14 years volunteering for Serve On, said: “These things are always time critical. We’re a light team and can move quickly. The sooner you get there, the more chance you have of saving lives.
“Every situation is different, in Turkey they were pulling live victims out 14 days after the earthquake. We hope we can get out there and make a difference.
“We’re a technical rescue team and can potentially find deeply entombed victims just by their movement. We still believe we will make a decent contribution if we get there in the next day or two.
“The British Government Fire Service Team are en route now, they’re a heavy team with 68 people and we’ve got links with them. But we don’t hear much (from Venezuela), we don’t know how they’re doing.”
Given there are no direct flights from the UK to Venezuela, the team has been at Madrid Airport since 9pm on Friday, after connecting flights from Istanbul were cancelled.
Flights from Madrid have also been cancelled, leaving the volunteers stranded due to their reliance on civilian transport.
Mr Young, who is Serve On’s international operations lead and training lead on top of his job as a construction project manager, added: “We’ve been reaching out to any other type of flights, military flights and lots of different ways.
“We have 11 out in deployment but twice that back in the UK working really hard to try to help us get there. We’re not alone – there’s a French team and two Spanish teams facing the same problems.
“We’ve been in contact with the Government and we know they’re doing all they can, we have evidence of that. They’re out to help us.
“It’s the saving lives aspect that motivates me. Serve On as an organisation has proved we can affect people’s lives deeply by saving people.
“We all understand that things are difficult, we’re frustrated and we want to be out there now.”
Matt Hasdell, a 24-year-old volunteer in the team, said: “It’s escalated quite quickly.
“There’s been a lot of logistics and making contact with other international teams and finding out different ways into the country.
“We don’t have infinite money, so it’s trying to manage our finances. Our priority is to go into the dangerous zone and save as many lives as possible.
“Our team has been working as hard as possible to get us on the ground.”
