CARACAS, Venezuela -- Firemen dug for bodies farther up the gully, and the house next door was smothered in mud, but 68-year-old Juan Crespo sat calmly at his dining room table, refusing to heed relief workers' calls to evacuate.
A resident of the Caracas slum hardest hit by Venezuela's worst natural disaster this century, Crespo is staying put in the house on a ravine's edge where he's lived for 40 years. Only the weather might change his mind."If it starts raining again, we're leaving," Crespo said.
Coaxing victims into shelters was just one of the challenges facing Venezuelan relief efforts today -- six days after torrential downpours sent mud, water and boulders crashing down a mountain that separates Caracas from the Caribbean Sea, wiping out whole neighborhoods and killing thousands.
The full magnitude of Venezuela's calamity may never be known.
Official estimates place the death toll anywhere between 5,000 and 30,000, but authorities say they can't yet be precise. Most of the bodies are thought to be buried deep under avalanches or carried out to sea.
The death toll "could be 20,000 or it could be 30,000," civil defense chief Angel Rangel told The Associated Press today, while acknowledging that estimates are being made partly from census data in towns that were devastated. "What's for sure is there are thousands and thousands."
Venezuela has asked the United States to provide 10,000 plastic body bags, officials said.
More than 68,000 people have been airlifted or bused from the disaster zone to Caracas and other cities, and Defense Minister Gen. Raul Salazar said 2,000 were still stranded in flood-wracked towns in Vargas state, one of the two hardest hit provinces.
Teams composed of soldiers, forensic specialists and search dogs were being dispatched to the state in a stepped-up search for the dead.
"We'll comb every part to see what (bodies) are visible," said the deputy justice minister, retired Gen. Vassily Kotosky. "The rest are under the rubble."
About 1,500 bodies have been recovered thus far, including a dozen corpses found floating in the ocean, he said. Corpses left in the open can lead to the spread of epidemics, Kotosky added. Health officials warned that children could suffer from diarrhea and dehydration.
Security is another major concern.
National guardsmen fired into the air Monday to disperse looters in La Guaira, a port on the northern coastal strip that took the brunt of nature's beating.
"Let them kill me," said 50-year-old Javier Martinez, one of a throng of hungry survivors caught taking food from shipping crates broken open by raging waters. "We don't need clothes, and we don't need toys. What we need is milk for the children."
But at major refugee center in Caracas, laughter was the remedy for the disaster's smallest survivors. Dozens of children giggled and smiled today as they chased volunteer clowns around an auditorium full of sullen-faced parents.
Private economists believe the damage to roads, ports, electricity, telephone lines, schools, hospitals and homes could reach $2 billion -- or 2 percent of the South American country's gross domestic product.
Economist Jose Toro said the damage could be five times as high. "The economic consequences of this tragedy are the equivalent of a war," he told the Union radio station.
The government, however, is telling Venezuelans to remain positive.
"We are not just confronting the situation, we are conquering it," President Hugo Chavez said in a nationally televised address Monday night.
Venezuela is mired in a deep recession, but Chavez pledged to provide solid housing and jobs for the estimated 150,000 people uprooted by the disaster. More than 23,000 homes were completely destroyed, he said.
Donning army fatigues and his trademark red beret, the wildly popular leader has personally commanded much of the relief effort.
At a refugee center in Caracas on Monday, Chavez hugged survivors, jotting down their names and promising to look into the fate of missing loved ones.
"Chavez, we love you," one woman shouted.
The disaster has not halted the president's sweeping political reforms. On Monday, Venezuela formally adopted a new constitution that was approved by voters on the same day last week that the catastrophe struck.
Officials said elections for a new Congress scheduled for early next year might be postponed because of the tragedy. If that happens, Chavez, a former coup leader carrying out radical reforms, would rule without a Congress to check his power.
Foreign emergency aid rushed in from around the world. The government put the value of the assistance at $4.5 million, and said it included 56 tons of food and 10 tons of medicine.