Three days after two devastating earthquakes struck northern Venezuela in rapid succession, the search for survivors is growing more desperate by the hour, and the window to find them alive is narrowing fast.
The death toll has climbed to at least 920, with more than 3,360 people injured, according to government officials. Scores more remain unaccounted for, buried under the rubble of collapsed apartment buildings, shopping centers and homes across the country’s northern coast. Authorities say at least 172 people are still believed to be trapped.
The twin quakes struck on Wednesday. The second, measured at a magnitude of 7.5, was among the strongest to hit Venezuela in more than a century. The region of La Guaira, a coastal state north of Caracas that is home to the country’s main international airport and one of its two primary ports, absorbed the worst of the destruction.
Venezuela’s crumbling infrastructure made a bad disaster worse
Even before the earth moved, Venezuela’s public systems were operating at the edge of collapse. Hospitals were running short of basic medicines and supplies. Roads and buildings across the country had gone without meaningful maintenance for years. The earthquakes did not create that fragility. They exposed it.
A Caracas physician told reporters that hospitals across the country were already struggling to treat patients on an ordinary day, without enough medicines or supplies to meet basic needs. The earthquake, he said, had pushed an already strained system into something far harder to manage than what other countries would face in a similar crisis.
Hundreds of buildings have been damaged or destroyed, including hospitals and medical centers, forcing the treatment of the injured in makeshift facilities. In some of the hardest-hit neighborhoods, residents began digging through concrete and steel with their bare hands before any heavy equipment arrived. Roads were damaged, communications disrupted and rescue resources stretched well beyond their limits.
Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, told reporters that international rescue workers on the ground had encountered conditions far worse than expected, driven by decades of underinvestment in the country’s infrastructure.
International Venezuela rescue effort surges in
Nearly 2,000 international rescue workers have now joined the response, according to United Nations humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher, who described conditions on the ground as devastating and said his teams were driven forward, minute by minute, by the sounds of survivors still alive beneath the rubble. He added that the hardest moments came when those sounds stopped.
His teams have deployed 39 search and rescue units, each comprising 50 to 100 specialists, along with more than 100 trained dogs and micro drones capable of navigating collapsed structures. Fletcher said the first 72 hours after an earthquake represent the most critical window for survival and that an international, coordinated global response was what the scale of the disaster demanded.
The United Kingdom sent a 68-person team led by Merseyside Fire and Rescue, departing Friday aboard a Royal Air Force flight from Brize Norton carrying equipment, dogs and drones. The United States announced a $150 million aid commitment alongside the deployment of warships and transport aircraft. Mexico, Switzerland and the Netherlands have also sent teams.
Despite the scale of the effort, aid groups say that delivering supplies inside Venezuela will require navigating a government that has historically been resistant to outside assistance, particularly from private organizations with ties to opposition groups. Activists inside the country have accused authorities of obstructing some relief efforts, with reports of donations being confiscated in certain areas. One humanitarian coordinator working on the ground said the crisis was not the kind that resolves in days. She expected it to stretch for months.
Venezuelans abroad scramble to send aid home
In Colombia, home to the largest Venezuelan diaspora in the world, hundreds of people turned up at community donation centers in Bogotá within hours of the disaster. They brought clothing, bottled water, canned food, hygiene products and even pet supplies, filling trucks bound for warehouses where aid groups are stockpiling goods before coordinating flights into Venezuela with the support of Colombian airlines.
Isabel Mendoza, a street vendor from Maracaibo who has lived in Bogotá for five years, brought clothes and basic medical supplies she purchased after seeing news of the quakes. Her own family was not affected, but she said the images of Caracas and La Guaira were enough to move her to act. A relative of Mariana Godoy, a logistics specialist who arrived at a Bogotá donation center with a cart full of supplies, was a doctor in Caracas whose building was badly damaged. He has been sleeping in his office with his wife and children since Wednesday. Godoy said the moment called for everyone to contribute whatever they could.
What survivors are facing on the ground
Acting President Delcy Rodríguez, who assumed leadership of the country after former President Nicolás Maduro was taken into U.S. custody in January on drug trafficking charges, has pledged to save as many people as possible. She said 214 aftershocks have been recorded since the initial quakes.
Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo López, speaking from exile in Spain, said the destruction had been enormous and that people across the country were in a state of shock. He described a dual collapse unfolding simultaneously, one physical and one institutional, with the state unable to deliver timely rescue support to the areas that needed it most. He also noted that ordinary Venezuelans had shown tremendous solidarity with one another in the absence of adequate government response.
In La Guaira, at least 243 people have been pulled from the rubble alive. Three young siblings emerged from a collapsed building covered in dust, their rescue broadcast on state television and described across the country as a rare moment of relief. The wife of Venezuelan footballer Héctor Bello died protecting their infant daughter during the quakes. In a social media post that circulated widely across Latin America, Bello wrote that he would one day tell his daughter how her mother never let go of her, even in her final moments.
Thousands of survivors are now sleeping in parks, public squares and emergency shelters. For many, what was their home three days ago is now a pile of debris. And for the families still waiting at the perimeter of collapsed buildings, listening for any sign of life, the silence is the hardest part to bear.
