Aid worker describes 'shocking' quake destruction

An experienced Merseyside aid worker helping co-ordinate emergency relief in the aftermath of two deadly earthquakes in Venezuela this summer has said she had never witnessed anything like it.

Anna Fraine, from Hoylake in Wirral, is in South America through her work as a programme manager for the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC).

A DEC spokesperson said 6,500 people had died following the disaster on 24 June, with more than 86,000 left requiring hospital treatment.

Speaking from the capital city Caracas, Fraine told BBC Radio Merseyside that she regularly travelled to areas affected by humanitarian crises to work with local response teams but "had not seen this level of destruction before".

She said the level of damage was "just immense" and "to see that level of destruction is really quite shocking".

Fraine said there was "a sense of hope but, certainly, the people in Venezuela are very resilient as this was a crisis on top of an existing crisis so they kind of see that they just have to keep going".

People were also coming together and supporting each other, she added.

Fraine said that in the most affected area of La Guaira "up to 80% of the buildings have been severely damaged or destroyed".

She said "just to see that level of destruction is really quite shocking... it's a very challenging situation that I've actually not seen before".

Fraine said people were waiting to see the tower blocks that they had lived in be demolished and it would "take a long time for people to recover from this", adding that "they lost their jobs and everything in an instant when those two major earthquakes struck".

This was why the support for the DEC for two years was going to be really critical to help people get back on their feet, she added.

The DEC brings together 15 leading UK aid charities.

Fraine said more than £23m had been raised for its Venezuela earthquake appeal.

She said she had seen for herself that the money had been helping to provide food and medical attention for local people and to enable water systems to be restored within schools and communities.

Fraine said that she had previously worked on the emergency response to the 2025 earthquake in Myanmar and in Ukraine.

She said witnessing the aftermath of such humanitarian crises had given her "a whole new perspective really on how fortunate" she was to have all of her basic needs met in life.

Her support for such charities began when she started fundraising for CAFOD - the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development - while at school.

She went on to work for them before joining the DEC.

Fraine said this instilled in her "an awareness of how we are a global community and when disaster strikes what is it that we can do to help"?

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