00:00Venezuela's interim president, Delce Rodriguez, has strongly denied that her government reacted too slowly to destruction caused by two earthquakes
00:09which devastated the country's northern coast.
00:12According to her, the government had issued an emergency decree to activate civil protection and emergency protocols within hours of
00:20the tremors.
00:23She put the rising death toll at 2,595 and said the government was not yet ending its search and
00:30rescue efforts.
00:32However, Rodriguez did not detail the number of people who were still missing.
00:36The number of people still unaccounted for on an unofficial but widely used online list was down to some 38
00:42,500 on Thursday evening after peaking at nearly 60,000 in the days immediately after the quakes.
00:49Victims of the quakes have spent days trying to dig out loved ones with their hands, shovels and pickaxes, assisted
00:56by firefighters, Civil Protection Corps, thousands of members of foreign rescue teams and even student doctors and nurses.
01:03Many rescuers have decried a lack of heavy machinery needed to move huge slabs of concrete.
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