"No brother, no brother, no! Why are you doing this to me?" a woman shouts while her husband tries to hold her up so she doesn't collapse to the ground.

The scene is repeated over and over again on the outskirts of Los Silos, an imposing concrete structure in La Guaira that, in the midst of the disaster caused by the double earthquake of June 24, has ceased to be a port storage facility and has become an improvised morgue.

There, under an intense tropical sun, dozens of families wait with a mixture of anguish and fear. They have come to confirm the death of their loved ones.

The authorities have arranged chairs both inside and outside the facilities, where there are several tents. The wait is long. Perhaps too long for those who have already spent days between hospitals, shelters and ruins.

In the line, sadness is contagious. Nobody speaks. Some look into space. Others check their phones reading news or responding to messages.

A few meters away, personnel from the Bolivarian Armed Forces, with long rifles, control access.

“I'm afraid of what I'm going to see inside, but it's the only way to end this agony,” a woman tells me before walking through the door.

He has been looking for his nephew for almost a week.

"I've looked for him everywhere: in the building, in the hospitals, I've talked to everyone... and no one knows anything."

Inside, the smell of decomposition is the first thing that hits.

The smell and the images

Several family members put their hands to their mouths. Most have covered themselves with cloth masks, which are not enough. Within minutes, many stop reacting: they get used to the nauseating smell.

A few meters away, hundreds of corpses lie in rows covered with plastic bags and exposed to the sun and intense heat of La Guaira, accelerating their decomposition.

The bodies are organized by rescue date. At one end, an awning offers free cremation. In another, a small forensic odontology module tries to identify bodies that no longer have almost human features.

Families have two options.

Those who believe they can identify their loved ones by the clothes they were wearing are sent to an area.

The rest—the majority—sit in front of two televisions.

There begins another ordeal.

More than 1,000 images of corpses slide in a sequence that seems eternal. The bodies have swollen faces, darkened skin; They are marked by blows, heat and time. Some are unrecognizable.

Families look for any trace to identify their loved ones. Any tattoo, a bracelet, a piece of clothing or an item from what was your home that was left in the shot.

If necessary, the two workers who slide their fingers on an iPad to move from one photo to another go back and zoom in on the teeth, a tattoo or a scar.

In front of one of the televisions, a woman bursts into tears when she recognizes her son thanks to a dusty blanket seen in an image. Another woman hugs her without knowing her.

A phone call interrupts the silence.

“This looks like a horror movie.”

"Man, I'm here recognizing my mom... but it's very difficult. Most of them are like charred," whispers a young man.

“This looks like a horror movie,” Liliana González, a 60-year-old resident of Catia La Mar, tells me as she leaves, who managed to recognize her 37-year-old nephew thanks to a tattoo.

“I was looking for my aunt… but my cousin, who is a nurse, told me that my nephew was here,” he explains.

"It wasn't on the list. I had to see the pictures." His voice trembles.

Then he reflects out loud: "This is the first time I've done this. I saw my mother when she died, but this... this is not the same."

“There are swollen bodies, with their eyes out, little children… I have never seen anything like this in my life,” he insists.

“No one took them out”

Modesta Alemán, 56, has come from Carayaca, in the west of La Guaira, looking for her older sister, Matilde.

Its building in Playa Grande was one of the most affected in the area.

"They told us that there was no life. That everyone was dead," he says.

"But then, a group of volunteers said they heard voices... that there were people in the elevator asking for help. But no one took them out."

Modesta does not enter the improvised morgue. Wait outside while other family members carry out the identification.

Maybe, he says, it was better this way.

The process can take hours. When a corpse is identified, the process to remove the body begins.

After identification, fingerprints are taken, if possible.

Then, the bodies are placed in urns. Later, the process begins to deliver the death certificate, an essential document so that funeral homes can finally remove the remains.

Jéssica Soto, 42 years old and resident of the OPP 33B building in Caraballeda, is prostrate in a chair at the entrance to Los Silos.

For two days he has been waiting for the remains of his 15-year-old daughter and his 3-year-old granddaughter, who were trapped in their apartment after the earthquakes. Their bodies were recovered on Tuesday, almost a week after the earthquakes.

“They make you wait and wait until the papers arrive, the trucks arrive and I don't know what else there is to wait for,” he tells BBC Mundo.

"There they are in an urn carrying the sun since yesterday. I have no choice but to wait and trust in God."

“It's good to feel someone's hand”

After losing his home, Soto now takes refuge at the Tanaguarena golf club. Her relatives tried to dissuade her from going to identify the bodies.

"When I saw her it was the worst. My daughter looked... she looked ugly. I recognized her thanks to a shirt and I knew it was her, but her face was not her face, it was the face of a monster."

The death toll already reaches almost 2,600 throughout Venezuela, and authorities believe it will increase significantly.

Liliana says she panicked when she was informed she would have to identify her nephew alone.

"But then two workers, seeing me like that, accompanied me to the body. They helped me find it so that I wouldn't suffer so much," he says. “Thank God, because at that moment it's good to feel someone's hand.”

When he saw the body, he claims that he was on the verge of fainting. He felt nauseous.

“Here where I am, I still feel like vomiting,” he confesses.

His aunt is still in the rubble. He fears he will have to return to the morgue in the next few days and repeat the process.