Chamo Venezuelan Cuisine<\/a> collected supplies, issuing a special plea for bandages, gauze, painkillers and other over-the-counter medicines.<\/p>\nAugusto Giancola, who was helping with the effort, said three to four people had been showing up each hour with \u201ctrunks full of stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a sense of despair,\u201d the Pasadena resident said. \u201cBut we are a very hopeful people. It\u2019s more about what we can do at this point, figuring out how we can help.\u201d<\/p>\n
In downtown Los Angeles, dozens of volunteers collected donations on the sidewalk outside the Venezuelan restaurant Full Arepas. Volunteers organized the supplies \u2014 toothbrushes, baby wipes, instant soup and many other items \u2014 and loaded them into boxes, drawing hearts on the outside with magic marker.<\/p>\n
![\"People](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1782739932_638_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Volunteers gather donations on the sidewalk outside the Venezuelan restaurant Full Arepa in downtown Los Angeles on Sunday.<\/p>\n
(David Zahniser \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
By midafternoon, a U-haul truck next to the restaurant was filled with donations.<\/p>\n
Kelly Montano, who owns Full Arepas, said members of her own family \u2014 her father, mother, a cousin and several others \u2014 had been missing since the quakes. Organizing the relief effort and running the business have been keeping her strong as she waits for word about her family, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard,\u201d said Montano, who came to the U.S. in 2015. \u201cIt\u2019s hard, and I don\u2019t know what\u2019s happening now.\u201d<\/p>\n
By the end of the afternoon, L.A. County rescue workers in Venezuela had begun work at another 10-story building \u2014 this one partially collapsed \u2014 where a guard was trapped in the security booth of an underground parking garage.<\/p>\n
![\"Rescue](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1782739933_628_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Rescue workers stand on collapsed buildings in Caraballeda, Venezuela, on Sunday.<\/p>\n
(Miguel Medina \/ Pool \/ AFP via AP)<\/p>\n
The team had begun cutting concrete and steel to get to the man, who could be heard but not seen, Espy said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re about 30 feet from him,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s going to take us 12 hours, maybe more, before we have him free.\u201d<\/p>\n
The county\u2019s rescue team features not just firefighters and paramedics but also doctors from the Department of Health Services and structural engineers trained to assess heavily damaged buildings, Espy said. <\/p>\n
The team, known as USA-2, is in Venezuela along with USA-1, which is made up of fire department rescue workers from Virginia\u2019s Fairfax County.<\/p>\n
Espy said rescue workers from USA-1 had pulled three survivors from the debris, including a 9-month-old baby. The U.S. State Department, which activated the international rescue operation, heralded that success.<\/p>\n
\u201cAgainst impossible odds, hope endures,\u201d the agency said in a social media post<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They arrived with rescue dogs, sophisticated listening devices and cutting tools that can rip through concrete. On Sunday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379246,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[153400,4188,22233,1552,141917,48,52,51,47,50,49,153397,592,8952,61070,153398,2489,20787,9298,153399,1597],"class_list":["post-379245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-baby-wipe","tag-building","tag-despair","tag-donation","tag-espy","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-much-needed-supply","tag-people","tag-quake","tag-rescue-team","tag-rescue-worker","tag-scene","tag-survivor","tag-venezuela","tag-venezuelan-restaurant-full-arepas","tag-volunteer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379245\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Members](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1782739931_5_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n