A Venezuelan eveningwear atelier is sewing body bags

Designer Efraín Mogollón begins his working day in Venezuela as usual, in an office hung with sketches of elegant dresses.

But the rows of women bent over sewing machines are not making his usual bright, playful pieces. Faces set and sombre, they are joining dark sheets of plastic: these are body bags. Earthquakes two weeks earlier killed more than 3,500 people and overwhelmed the emergency services. The only ornament is an embossed image of Jesus Christ fixed to the zip.

“It is a completely different feeling,” says Mogollón, loading several plastic-wrapped covers into an ambulance in Catia La Mar, a coastal district of La Guaira state near Caracas. It is one of the worst-hit places in the tremors of 24 June, of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5. “And at the same time we are filled with satisfaction knowing that with our small contribution, from where we are, we are helping,” he adds, standing on a street where buildings have been reduced to heaps of concrete, brick and rebar.

Much of the rescue and recovery work on the ground was carried out by civilians themselves, alongside professional rescue teams from around the world, firefighters and volunteers from the army. Civilians also provided a large share of the in-kind aid in the first days after the tremors — food and clothing, especially in La Guaira. International humanitarian organisations, including the International Rescue Committee, said the response did not match the scale of the need.

In the cramped workshop, Mogollón’s team unrolls lengths of black polythene across a large table. Bolts of fabric stand against the wall — pink, red, blue. The women’s mannequins have been pushed aside.

Seamstress Mary Castillo has been sewing body bags every day for two weeks. She says the work has been hard but has given her a sense of purpose amid the tragedy. “It is very sad. But we have to keep working and make an effort to move forward.”