BRYAN, Texas (KBTX) – As crews continue to sift through destroyed buildings and piles of rubble in Venezuela, following back-to-back earthquakes this week, which claimed the lives of more than 900 people and injured thousands more, the Director of Texas Task Force 1, Jeff Saunders, sat down with KBTX to talk about what the mission for those crews looks like.
“They’re going to be looking for all of those structures, and there’s too many for any one team to handle,” Sauders said. “So they’re all going to divide it up, and they’re going to look for specific buildings where they can focus and bring canine search and rescue, assets, and technical search assets to locate those victims that are still alive.”
Saunders said that because of the scope of damage, it will take teams, from all over the world, days to weeks, if not longer, to sift through all of it.
“If somebody has food and water and they’re stuck in a place in a fairly large void space, they can survive for a long time,” Saunders said.
Click on the video above to watch the entire interview
Texas Task Force 1 trains for urban search and rescue operations at its facility in College Station, called Disaster City.
“All of those buildings have been built based off of earthquakes and explosions, and man-made incidents,” Saunders said. “During an earthquake situation, the one thing that we have to worry about is aftershocks and the stability of the damaged structures”
“During an earthquake, there is a lot of extra shoring and safety that goes into protecting the survivors that are still trapped, as well as the rescuers that are in the building.”
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