The death toll from Venezuela’s devastating twin earthquakes has surpassed 4,000, according to the government. Venezuelan parliament chief Jorge Rodriguez reported on Telegram that at least 4,118 people were killed and 16,740 injured in the back-to-back quakes on June 24 that ravaged entire districts in the coastal state of La Guaira. Thousands more are still listed as missing.
The twin earthquakes, which included a 7.5-magnitude quake – the largest in Venezuela in over a century – struck 39 seconds apart, flattening entire high-rise apartment blocks. Although rescue teams have halted searches for survivors, family members continue to search the ruins for their loved ones, hoping to provide them with a dignified burial. A 3.0-magnitude quake in central Caracas on Friday caused momentary panic, leading to the evacuation of buildings.
The scale of the recovery effort facing Venezuela is enormous, particularly given the country’s severely degraded state services due to a prolonged economic crisis. The United Nations has issued an urgent appeal for nearly $300 million towards earthquake relief operations to assist 1.3 million people in urgent need of aid. Mobile kitchens, clinics, and field hospitals have been set up in public spaces in La Guaira, where most of the devastation occurred.
The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction estimates that the direct physical damage to housing and infrastructure is around $37 billion. Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, has called for the release of frozen assets held abroad to be used towards the recovery. She has also requested that King Charles III release about 30 tons of Venezuelan gold frozen under UK sanctions.
Delcy Rodríguez has defended her country’s emergency response to the twin earthquakes, vowing that the country would not descend into social unrest. However, many Venezuelans have expressed anger at what they see as the government’s inadequate response to the disaster before international teams arrived.
