ZAKA, Israel’s volunteer emergency response organization which conducts search, rescue, and recovery operations, deployed an international response team to Venezuela following a direct request by Venezuelan authorities for aid from Israel, Israel’s Tazpit Press Service (TPS) reported last Tuesday.
The international response team was deployed to Venezuela on June 29, ZAKA posted on Facebook on Wednesday.
The team conducted search-and-rescue missions inside collapsed structures alongside the Venezuelan government and local authorities, TV7 announced last Tuesday. Meanwhile, ZAKA engineers evaluated whether damaged buildings appeared safe for residents to return to.
Volunteers from ZAKA also distributed tents, medicine, and non-perishable food to the people of Venezuela, and has brought down specialist physicians to assist hospitals swamped with patients.
The organization is also helping assess land for a new residential neighborhood for families left homeless by the twin 7.2- and 7.5-magnitude earthquakes, in which as many as 16,740 people were injured.
ZAKA worked alongside an Israeli response and aid delegation, including personnel from the Foreign Ministry, the IDF Home Front Command, and the National Emergency Management Authority, JNS reported on Wednesday.
Working with the personnel on-site in Venezuela was a team of 20 specialists based in Israel. The remote team has been helping prepare a long-term rebuilding plan for Venezuela. The plan has already been presented to Venezuela’s infrastructure minister, and Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, is expected to receive it in the days to come.
Alongside aid, ZAKA brings Venezuelans ‘light and hope’
Along the way, the team had not forgotten the importance of boosting people’s morale. Yosef Garmon, director of ZAKA in Latin America, told TPS that a Venezuelan man had asked ZAKA rescuers to recite psalms over his mother’s body.
“One local told us, ‘Other delegations may have brought more equipment or larger teams, but you brought the most light and hope,’” Garmon said to TPS. “To me, that is the essence of humanitarian work. We are not there only to rebuild buildings - we are there to help rebuild people’s spirit.”