Rushing from one disaster to another

A member of the Topos Azteca volunteer rescue squad working among the rubble in Cali, Colombia.— Federico Rios/The New York Times

FOR 40 days, they laboured in Venezuela, rescuing survivors from the wreckage and later recovering bodies from La Guaira, the coastal region that was the nexus of death and destruction triggered by back-to-back earthquakes.

After a quake struck in neighbouring Colombia on Aug 10, they hopped on a red-eye flight.