For ex-policeman Jan Carlos Roa Garcia and his family, it was another night sleeping rough. Their building in Caracas wasn’t brought down but is too dangerous to return to, according to BBC. Tears rolling down his cheeks, he says he’s not sure he even knows how to rebuild his family’s life again. ‘If I was 30 and not 50, then maybe. But I don’t know where to begin. And so far, no-one in authority has contacted us.’

Community Support Over Government Aid

As a loyal public servant, Jan Carlos was careful not to over-criticise the government’s response, exhausted and angry though he is. Musician Zaira Castro had no such reservations. ‘We’re all pretty frustrated because the government is not showing what it should – a serious display of help,’ she says in a plaza just a block away from two collapsed buildings, according to BBC. ‘It’s actually us, the Venezuelans, who are helping each other. We live in a society that has grown into helping each other. We don’t depend on the government – that doesn’t exist for us anymore.’

Interim President Faces Criticism

In the same part of town, called Chacao, the Interim President, Delcy Rodriguez, took a tour with the mayor and was on the receiving end of residents’ ire. ‘You’re campaigning in the middle of a tragedy! The government isn’t doing anything for the people,’ yelled one resident, according to BBC. On a personal level, the author knows these streets well. They lived in the affected neighbourhood of Los Palos Grandes in Chacao for several years when they were the BBC’s Venezuela Correspondent. Their old apartment block was just metres from the collapsed Petunia building, where rescue crews are working around the clock to reach trapped residents. A friend recently posted on social media that her mother was among the missing under the building’s rubble.

Podcast Examines Flood Accountability

A year after flooding Central Texas killed more than 130 people, the community is left with questions: philosophical ones about life with grief and practical ones about accountability, according to AOL.com. A new public media-powered podcast, After the Flood, launched June 24 to catch up with survivors in search of answers. The five-part podcast series, hosted by Dominic Anthony Walsh of Houston Public Media, combines the efforts of the famous PBS investigative documentary program Frontline and the Texas Newsroom, a collaborative news network between NPR, KUT News in Austin, KERA in North Texas, Houston Public Media, Texas Public Radio in San Antonio, and more stations. It is supported by Frontline’s Local Journalism Initiative, which is in turn funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Most of the flooding happened in Kerr County along the Guadalupe River, and much of the podcast focuses on this region. However, communities North of Austin proper also experienced flooding, including Sandy Creek, the topic of one episode that addresses the neglect the community experienced, or as a press release about the podcast puts it, their ‘feeling overlooked in the broader disaster response.’ Other episodes present first-person accounts of the floods, the history of the outdated flood warning system in the Hill Country’s notorious ‘Flash Flood Alley,’ the legal struggle to install new safety legislation for children’s camps in the area, like Camp Mystic, and anniversary reflections on what will come next in long-term recovery. Episodes include reporting by Kailey Hunt (KUT News), Lucio Vasquez (The Texas Newsroom), Sarah Grunau (Houston Public Media), and more. ‘The first days of a disaster are only part of the story,’ said Walsh in the release.