Devastating earthquakes leave Tri-City Venezuelans reeling. How they plan to help
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Organizers will prioritize sleeping mats, tents, baby formula, medical supplies and.
Yamil Saad and Nairubi Padilla had been saving money to celebrate their baby’s first birthday in the Tri-Cities. But their plan changed when two powerful earthquakes measuring 7.2 and 7.5 on the Richter scale struck Venezuela the week of the celebration, leaving 1.8 million people affected, according to the United Nations.
Padilla’s family members were among them.
Instead of hosting the party, the Venezuelan couple who immigrated to the Tri-Cities in 2023 decided to use their savings to organize a donation drive. They hope the community will help families in Venezuela recover from the disaster.
Saad said that although they will not celebrate the Independence Day out of respect for those who died and because they do not identify with the holiday, they hope the community will support a country grappling with both the aftermath of the earthquakes and a political crisis that has persisted for decades.
“This is an emergency we haven’t experienced in 30 years,” Saad, 40, said, sitting beside his wife and holding his baby. “We chose this day because we know families will already be together and people can take 15 minutes to drop off a donation.”
Where the Tri-Cities donations will go
Miami has become the main U.S. hub for relief efforts following the earthquakes, serving as a staging point for nearly 250 civilian search-and-rescue volunteers and warehouses collecting humanitarian aid, according to a federal official who spoke with the Miami Herald.
Those efforts have been fueled by Florida’s large Venezuelan community. About 254,000 Venezuelans live in the greater Miami metropolitan area, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2024 American Community Survey.
Among the organizations coordinating shipments to Venezuela is Global Empowerment Mission, where Saad and Padilla plan to send everything collected during the Tri-Cities donation drive.
Because collection centers in Miami already have enough water and clothing, Saad said the Tri-Cities drive will instead prioritize:
• Sleeping mats
• Tents
• Baby formula
• Blankets
• Canned food
• Flashlights for rescue crews
• Medical supplies, including acetaminophen, oral rehydration salts, bandages, gauze, gloves, syringes, medications for high blood pressure and diabetes, crutches and asthma medicine.
“We’ll sort through the donations and pack the boxes right there at the park,” Padilla said. “We’ll organize and seal everything. If people bring items that aren’t needed, we’ll return them.”
Once they have the details on which park they will be at, donors will be able to find the collection site by looking for a Venezuelan flag and the tables.
Family impacted
The home where Padilla’s cousin lived, about a 20-minute drive from the earthquake’s epicenter, collapsed. He, his wife and their three daughters are now sleeping on a soccer field alongside other displaced families.
Two of her cousin’s sisters-in-law were killed when they were crushed by debris, while two other relatives remain missing.
“We believe they’re already dead,” said Padilla.
“More than 120 hours have passed, and the people trapped beneath the rubble have no water and nothing to eat,” Saad said. “We still have hope they can be rescued, but we need the community’s support.”
Getting the donations to Venezuela presents another challenge.
Saad said he is looking for volunteers who can transport the donations to Portland, where fellow Venezuelan Noleddy Godoy, president of Alianza Hispana organization, and Unidos por Venezuela organization will take the supplies collected in the Tri-Cities.
Godoy said that the donations from the Tri-Cities would arrive in Venezuela within a month and a half due the closure of La Guaira’s port, as part of its infrastructure was also affected by a power outage caused by the earthquake.
“We’ve already sent 600 boxes of donations from Portland to Miami,” Godoy said in a phone call to the Tri-City Herald. “That single shipment to Miami cost $7,600. We have four more shipments to make. Trucks from American Logistic, our business partner, will come from Miami to pick up the donations and take them to donation drop-offs.”
Another local effort
Aryelis Rojas and Erick Veliz, who moved from Venezuela to the Tri-Cities in 2019, were working at their Kennewick restaurant, Antojos 509, when they learned about the earthquakes.
“I was behind the counter when my husband told me there had been an earthquake in Venezuela,” said Rojas. “At first I said, ‘OK,’ because earthquakes happen there from time to time and we were busy working. Then he told me it was a major one. After I saw the news, the first thing I did was call my father.”
Once they confirmed their relatives were safe, the couple decided they needed to help those who had lost everything.
The next day, about 15 Latino community members, including Venezuelans, Mexicans and Dominicans, met with Rojas and Veliz and agreed that for now the fastest way to help would be to raise money and send it to trusted nonprofit organizations already working in Venezuela.
A donation canister has been placed at Antojos 509, located at 5453 Ridgeline Drive, Suite 140, in Kennewick. The couple plans to transfer the money collected each week to organizations including Global Empowerment Mission, and Victoria Venezuela Foundation.
They are also accepting donations of clothing and nonperishable food, which they plan to send gradually to collection centers in Miami, recognizing that rebuilding after the disaster will take months.
“Fortunately, the Venezuelan community there has donated so much, even with the little they have,” Rojas said. “Those of us living in the United States, in a better economic situation, have to do something. We have to help.”
