Source: THE AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

Thou­sands of peo­ple af­fect­ed by the dev­as­tat­ing earth­quakes in Venezuela last month are in­creas­ing­ly fac­ing chal­lenges ac­cess­ing clean wa­ter as well as san­i­ta­tion and hy­giene ser­vices.

Fam­i­lies in the hard­est-hit state, La Guaira, have tak­en to the beach to show­er and re­lieve them­selves, with ex­cre­ment now dot­ting parts of the once-crowd­ed Caribbean beach­es. Oth­ers are us­ing the lit­tle wa­ter that did not spill from their home stor­age tanks to do dish­es and clean them­selves. Many are liv­ing in tem­po­rary shel­ters or out­doors af­ter 190 build­ings col­lapsed and 856 oth­ers were dam­aged, ac­cord­ing to Venezue­lan of­fi­cials, in the back-to-back earth­quakes on June 24 that killed 3,685 peo­ple.