Venezuela Earthquake Live Updates: Search for Survivors Grows Desperate as Death Toll Climbs Past 1,700

A man who had been deported to Venezuela from the United States just hours before the earthquake struck.

The more than 1,700 lives lost in Venezuela’s deadliest earthquakes in more than a century began to come into focus over the weekend, as families, still disoriented and distraught, began to bury loved ones.

Hundreds of relatives and friends made the pilgrimage on Sunday to a sprawling, mountainside cemetery overlooking Caracas, the capital, to lay to rest mothers and fathers, children and grandparents — Venezuelans of all ages and walks of life united by tragedy.

Freshly turned earth pocked the vast rows of tombstones. The cemetery’s four chapels were packed with mourners who cycled in and out to accommodate dozens of services.

The stench of death filled the air, a reminder of how long many of the victims’ bodies had remained trapped in the ruins.

“I don’t know whether to cry, or scream, or help, or support, because there are no words to ease this pain,” said Honny González, a teacher who taught the two boys, Samuel and Diego, who died with their mother, Licelot Gomera de Álvarez, 41.

The boys’ father, Eder Álvarez, had gone on a bike ride when the two quakes struck in quick succession on Wednesday evening. Mr. Álvarez, 41, said he pedaled as hard as he could back to his home in Caracas, only to find the five-story building where the family had lived reduced to a hulking pile of debris.

At first, police officers “wouldn’t let me through,” Mr. Álvarez said in an interview at the funeral. “I told them, with agony, to let me in because my family was in there and I wanted to rescue them.”

He was eventually allowed in and, joined by other residents and volunteers, sifted through the wreckage with his bare hands hoping to find his wife and two children alive. Instead, he found their bodies, huddled together.

On Sunday, their three caskets were lowered into the ground, one atop the other.

Neighbors, teachers and young classmates of the two boys exchanged quiet hugs during the funeral service, at one point wrapping their arms around a casket.

Ms. Gomera’s parents and two siblings, wiping away tears, recalled her as an accomplished accountant with an arts and crafts side hustle — but above all, a dedicated mother who radiated delight.

“My sister was a joyful woman,” said her sister, Rabely Gomera. “She dedicated herself to her family, and my nephews, who were deeply loved, and were a reflection of who she was: beautiful, respectful, good-hearted, and kind children.”

Nearby, mourners bid farewell to Fátima Durán, 26, a tall, black haired graphic designer who had won multiple local pageants, a cultural obsession in Venezuela, where the contests are treated like major sporting events.

Her blue-crystal crown sat nestled atop the urn that held her ashes, surrounded by fashion books, photos of her and arrangements of pink roses, her favorite flower. Former pageant queens, both young and older, gathered wearing pink roses on their lapels and around their necks.

“She was an exemplary girl, with a good, noble heart,” said her mother, Carolina García, who also had competed in beauty pageants.

Ms. Durán died while visiting her boyfriend in La Guaira, the city that suffered the worst damage. Her boyfriend and his father also died, Ms. García said.

Ms. García sobbed as she showed her phone with Ms. Durán’s last-recorded location.

“One day she grabbed my phone and set up our locations,” Ms. García said. “She told me, ‘If something ever happens to you, I’ll find you, and if something ever happens to me, you’ll find me.’”

“And I found her — that was how I found her, and I brought her back,” she said.

For relatives of Gustavo Adolfo Guevara Figueroa, a 22-year-old man who had been deported after five years living in Miami, an anticipated homecoming turned into an unbearable tragedy.

Mr. Guevara Figueroa had landed on a deportation flight at Venezuela’s main airport on Wednesday morning along with dozens of other deportees. His family said the group was moved to a hotel in La Guaira being used temporarily to hold some recent arrivals.

The earthquake struck later in the day, killing him and possibly other recently deported Venezuelans staying at the hotel, his family said.

“I feel devastated, completely devastated because we were like siblings,” said his cousin, María Guevara, 27. “It was a total disaster because the government officials were denying us the phone numbers, the locations.”

Unable to find her cousin, Ms. Guevara and her family searched hospitals over three grueling days, seeing thousands of bodies before they finally found his, “barely recognizable,” at the morgue of a hospital in La Guaira.

“I went to so many hospitals,” she said, adding, “the smell was unbearable.”