Thir­ty-sev­en Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als, in­clud­ing mem­bers of the na­tion­al ta­ble ten­nis team, re­turned home safe­ly yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing the dev­as­tat­ing dou­ble earth­quakes that struck neigh­bour­ing Venezuela last Wednes­day.

Their re­turn was co­or­di­nat­ed through the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs, af­ter the June 24 dou­ble seis­mic event left wide­spread de­struc­tion across parts of the South Amer­i­can na­tion and made it im­pos­si­ble to re­turn home on their own ac­cord.

In a me­dia re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, the min­istry said the group’s re­turn was fa­cil­i­tat­ed through the in­ter­ven­tion of Min­is­ter Sean Sobers and co­or­di­nat­ed by the T&T Em­bassy in Cara­cas.

The diplo­mat­ic ef­fort was led by Chargé d’Af­faires Dayne-Marc Chin Slick and the em­bassy team.

The min­istry al­so ac­knowl­edged the as­sis­tance of Hov­er Tours and the man­age­ment and staff of Ru­ta­ca Air­lines in en­sur­ing the na­tion­als were able to leave Venezuela and re­turn safe­ly to T&T.

The re­turn comes as Venezuela con­tin­ues to search for miss­ing peo­ple and re­cov­er the dead in the af­ter­math of one of the most de­struc­tive seis­mic events in its mod­ern his­to­ry.

On June 24, two pow­er­ful earth­quakes mea­sur­ing mag­ni­tudes 7.2 and 7.5 struck north­ern Venezuela with­in less than a minute of each oth­er, trig­ger­ing wide­spread build­ing col­laps­es and se­vere dam­age across sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly in La Guaira and ar­eas sur­round­ing Cara­cas. Ini­tial re­ports sug­gest­ed low­er ca­su­al­ty num­bers, but au­thor­i­ties warned the fig­ures would rise as res­cue op­er­a­tions con­tin­ued.

By yes­ter­day, in­ter­na­tion­al re­ports in­di­cat­ed the con­firmed death toll had climbed to at least 1,450 peo­ple, while more than 3,100 were re­port­ed in­jured. Thou­sands re­main dis­placed and res­cue teams from mul­ti­ple coun­tries con­tin­ue search ef­forts in af­fect­ed ar­eas amid fears many peo­ple re­main trapped be­neath col­lapsed struc­tures.

The earth­quakes were felt across parts of the south­ern Caribbean, in­clud­ing T&T, prompt­ing con­cern among rel­a­tives of na­tion­als in Venezuela and re­newed at­ten­tion to emer­gency pre­pared­ness across the re­gion. (See page 9)

No in­juries among the re­turn­ing T&T na­tion­als were re­port­ed by the min­istry.