Santa Barbara, California, June 26 -- As an elite medical team deploys to Venezuela, Direct Relief is mobilizing an emergency grant to support their swift, effective response to Wednesday's cataclysmic double earthquakes.

The first 72 hours following a disaster are the most critical for both search and rescue and medical intervention. Rescue efforts are most likely to uncover survivors from rubble; doctors are most able to save the lives of grievously injured patients, often working amid the rubble or in makeshift displacement centers.

Medical Impact, a Mexico- and Colombia-based emergency response group with a storied history of responding in this pivotal window, sends mobile medical teams to global disaster settings from Guatemala to ...