Luxembourg flies emergency telecoms team to quake-hit Venezuela

As Venezuela counted the dead from the strongest earthquakes to strike the country in more than a century, Luxembourg joined the international relief operation on Friday evening, sending a small team of humanitarian specialists and a deployable satellite-communications system toward the disaster zone.

Two members of the humanitarian intervention team (HIT) of the Grand Ducal Fire and Rescue Corps (CGDIS) left Luxembourg on Friday aboard a Luxembourg Air Rescue aircraft, carrying elements of the country's emergency.lu platform to help restore communications for relief workers, according to L'essentiel, citing the responsible ministries. A further three HIT experts were due to fly from Rome on Saturday to reinforce the European Union's on-the-ground coordination cell.

The mission was authorised by Deputy Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, who holds the development cooperation and humanitarian affairs portfolio, and by Home Affairs Minister Léon Gloden. The deployment is expected to last around 15 days, with the European Union co-financing 75 percent of the cost through its Civil Protection Mechanism.

A satellite lifeline built after Haiti

Luxembourg's distinctive contribution is communications. The emergency.lu platform is a mobile satellite-telecommunications system created after the 2010 Haiti earthquake, when aid teams found that destroyed networks had crippled coordination in the critical first hours. It is run by the Directorate for Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Affairs, part of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as a public-private partnership with the satellite operator SES, the engineering firm HITEC and Luxembourg Air Rescue.

According to its operators, the system can be flown anywhere in the world and brought online within hours of an alert, re-establishing voice and data links so that humanitarian and civil-protection teams can talk to one another and to headquarters. It works alongside United Nations agencies and the Emergency Telecommunications Cluster. In the EU's own breakdown of national offers, Luxembourg's package is listed as "telecommunication, shelter and energy equipment."

An eight-nation European response

Luxembourg is one of eight member states that activated under the EU Civil Protection Mechanism in the first 48 hours. The European Commission said Czechia, Spain, Italy, France, Luxembourg, Germany, Portugal and the Netherlands had together mobilised more than 520 responders, among them firefighters, rescue dogs and medical staff. Italy is sending a medical team; other states are contributing search-and-rescue capacity. The bloc also activated its Copernicus satellite service to map the damage from space.

We stand with the people of Venezuela at this time of great tragedy and catastrophe.

That was European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who said the Commission was coordinating the European response and stood ready to offer more, including medical aid. The EU's crisis-management commissioner, Hadja Lahbib, added that she was "grateful to see more European countries stepping in to help Venezuela."

Hundreds dead, tens of thousands displaced

The two quakes struck north-central Venezuela on Wednesday 24 June. According to the United States Geological Survey, a magnitude-7.2 foreshock at 18:04 local time was followed 38 seconds later by a magnitude-7.5 mainshock, both shallow, with an epicentre near San Felipe in Yaracuy state. The heaviest destruction fell on the coastal state of La Guaira and on the capital, Caracas. A tsunami advisory issued for Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and the US Virgin Islands was later lifted.

By Friday, acting President Delcy Rodríguez put the toll at 589 dead and nearly 3,000 injured, figures that have climbed with each update as rescuers reach collapsed buildings. Al Jazeera reported that at least 70,000 families had been displaced in La Guaira alone, with hundreds feared trapped under rubble.

The international mobilisation has been large and fast. The United States dispatched federal search-and-rescue task forces and pledged a $150 million aid package; Brazil sent a field hospital; El Salvador, Mexico, Colombia, Turkey, India and Switzerland all flew in rescuers and tonnes of equipment. United Nations agencies are coordinating needs assessments, and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies released emergency funds.

Few Luxembourgers in harm's way

Luxembourg's foreign ministry said 22 people of Luxembourg nationality were registered as living in Venezuela, and that none had contacted consular services for help. No Luxembourg residents had logged the country as a destination on the LamA travel-declaration platform. The Grand Duchy keeps no embassy in Venezuela and is represented in Caracas by the Royal Netherlands Embassy.

For a country of some 670,000 people, the dispatch is a familiar role rather than an exceptional one. Through emergency.lu and its small but specialised civil-protection teams, Luxembourg has for more than a decade positioned itself as a provider of the unglamorous backbone of disaster response — the connectivity, shelter and power that let larger rescue contingents do their work. On Friday evening, that backbone was once again in the air.