LOS CORALES, Venezuela — A backhoe is digging through the ruins of a 12-story building that collapsed in this town on Venezuela’s Caribbean coast during last week’s back-to-back earthquakes. But the government backhoe operator never showed up, so local residents passed the hat for donations to pay for one.

Such delays are costing lives, says Rosalia Bustamante, who lost several friends who were inside the building.

“There were people in the ruins responding when we called out to them,” she says. “But now, they are dead.”

Frustration is growing in Venezuela following the powerful twin quakes that the government says have killed at least 1,719 people. Critics claim the response from the country’s U.S.-backed government has been slow and inept, leaving it largely up to people in the disaster zone to save themselves and recover the dead.

Such is the scene in Los Corales, in La Guaira, the state which the government says was hit the hardest by the disaster.

Neighborhood volunteers have pulled more than a dozen corpses out of the 12-story building. But lacking body bags, they resort to garbage bags and plastic sheets. There are no refrigerated containers to store the bodies and in the tropical heat, the stench is overpowering.

Venezuela has thousands of police and army troops. But they have been slow to arrive and some have been accused of looting. They’ve also set up roadblocks and are demanding government permits from doctors and rescue workers.

Julio Meléndez, who owns a Caracas construction company, tried to bring in a badly needed jackhammer to help break up debris and search for survivors. But the process took two days because police wanted to see his permit as well as the sales receipt for the jackhammer.

“The only thing the authorities do is get in the way,” he says.

Politics also got in the way the last time this part of Venezuela faced disaster.

In 1999 after mudslides killed at least 10,000 people, then-President Hugo Chávez rejected help from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to rebuild roads and bridges. He instead relied on help from his communist allies in Cuba.

Now, aid workers are arriving from all over the world. And Venezuela was already in bad shape before the earthquakes. People here have endured an economic meltdown plus a crackdown on their democracy. All this has prompted more than a quarter of the population to flee the country, including large numbers of health workers and engineers.

Alejandro Palomino, center, with the Los Angeles County Fire Department, checks his radio during a search and rescue mission in Catia La Mar, La Guaira state, Venezuela, on Sunday. The Los Angeles County Fire Department’s international urban search and rescue team was working in neighborhoods devastated by Venezuela’s back-to-back earthquakes, as part of the scramble to find survivors.

Carlos Becerra/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

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Carlos Becerra/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Retired Venezuelan Army Gen. Antonio Rivero says Rodríguez could have immediately deployed the country’s armed forces with trucks, generators, portable lights and water systems. That didn’t happen.