RACHEL LEVIN, CNN ASSIGNMENT EDITOR: When I found out that I was going to be sent down to Venezuela to cover the floods, I had really no idea how great of a disaster it was. When I got there, I saw nothing but mud for miles. There was places you couldn't walk, what was a neighborhood, which now was just brown mud covered from as far as the eye could see. You could just sense how long it was going to be before really the city began to get back on its feet again economically. Sanitary issues were there, and it just was a time of -- of great mourning for the country, especially when all the world was getting ready to celebrate the new year.</s>MARK POTTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: What struck me were the rescue workers, the Venezuelan Red Cross workers, who were out there day in, day out. It was a horrible disaster, and that disaster, itself, could be seen on the faces of the rescue workers who were out there trying to help, trying to find survivors, trying to make it better, and realizing that it was clearly an uphill task. We saw a lot of people who had survived, who had nothing left. This was happening over the Christmas holiday. Of course, for them, there was no Christmas. There was no reason to celebrate the millennium. They had lost everything. It was a devastating event. It was the worst natural disaster in Venezuelan history.
CNN 20: Mudslides in Venezuela, December 15, 1999