Venezuela Earthquake Death Toll Climbs Past 1,500 as Rescuers Race Against Time
By Vivian Sequera
CARACAS, June 28 (Reuters) — Rescue teams raced against the clock on Sunday, digging through rubble for signs of life after twin earthquakes devastated parts of Venezuela earlier this week, with occasional rescues offering brief respites in what has become a grim effort to account for tens of thousands of missing people.
The death toll from Wednesday's quakes — magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5 — neared 1,500 on Sunday, according to officials, as foreign rescue crews poured into La Guaira, the coastal state hit hardest and located just 40 km (25 miles) north of Caracas. The region, long mired in a deep political and economic crisis, saw dozens of buildings reduced to sand and twisted metal.
“Rescue and recovery efforts are ongoing. Today we have recovered people alive, and therefore operations are not being suspended. We always maintain hope,” said interim President Delcy Rodriguez, who also announced a presidential commission to assess building safety. Flanked by cabinet ministers, she said school closures would continue for another week and that 75% of electricity in La Guaira had been restored.
Rodriguez, who took office after her predecessor was ousted by the U.S. in a January raid, thanked civilian volunteers delivering aid to the disaster zone — but then tightened road access, citing traffic that was blocking emergency vehicles. Earlier, Jorge Rodriguez, the interim president’s brother and head of the National Assembly, said the death toll had risen by 20 on Sunday to 1,450. He reported 3,150 injured, 12,721 displaced, and 774 collapsed buildings.
“We are in critical hours, in crucial hours to continue rescuing lives and to build camps where those who have lost their homes — or cannot return for any reason — can stay,” he said.
Families and volunteers spent days pulling survivors and bodies from the debris before the arrival of more than 2,600 foreign rescue workers. They often complained of a shortage of heavy equipment and limited official presence, as hundreds of aftershocks deepened damage and kept residents on edge. By Saturday evening, the government said at least 33 people had been rescued alive, including several children, while tens of thousands remained unaccounted for.
A father and his son were pulled out alive from the rubble of a collapsed building on Sunday as teams raced to find more survivors. Although the government has given a figure of hundreds missing or trapped, just under 50,000 people were listed as unaccounted for on a website promoted by the opposition on Sunday — a slight decline from 55,000 the day before.
LIMITED TIME FOR FINDING SURVIVORS
The U.S. Geological Survey estimated that more than 10,000 deaths were possible from the two quakes, which would rank among Latin America’s deadliest in the last century. “There exists a window of roughly three days, 72 hours, where the probability afterward decreases that you can save people alive,” said Sebastian Eugster, leader of the Swiss rescue team. His 80-member team, aided by eight search dogs, had located multiple people alive but was unable to extract them in time. Saturday evening marked 72 hours since the quakes.
RESCUED CHILDREN
The U.S. State Department hailed the rescue of an infant by American crews on Saturday, posting a video on social media showing helmet-clad rescuers pulling a blanket-wrapped, wailing child from the debris. A Colombian team also saved an 11-year-old boy named Moises, who had been trapped about 3 meters (10 feet) deep. He was removed on a stretcher with a broken arm, his eyes covered to protect them from daylight. His mother and sister died in the collapse.
Mexican rescuers working at a collapsed building in the town of Caraballeda saved another 11-year-old boy, Rodriguez posted late Saturday, showing crews carrying a small figure on a stretcher out of the rubble.
Pope Leo on Sunday told worshippers at the Angelus prayer in Rome that he wanted “to express my closeness to the Venezuelan sisters and brothers affected by the recent earthquakes” and expressed gratitude to rescue workers.
A senior U.S. official said on Saturday that a funding package worth hundreds of millions of dollars is expected to be announced within the next day, on top of the $150 million already committed by the Trump administration. The disaster has further complicated the country’s political landscape: opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado told media outlets on Sunday she planned to return to Venezuela, where she had been living in hiding since a 2024 presidential election that international observers say the opposition won. She left in December to receive her prize. A White House official told Reuters on Saturday that her push to return home is frustrating senior officials in Washington, who said it was too soon after the disaster.
Venezuela’s largest refinery, the 645,000-barrel-per-day Amuay, shut down operations on Sunday following a large power outage in western Falcon state, according to workers at the facility.
(Reporting by Vivian Sequera in Caracas and Efrain Otero in La Guaira; Additional reporting by Diego Ore in Mexico City, Julia Symmes Cobb in Bogota, Francesca Landini in Vatican City, Akanksha Khushi in Bangalore; Writing by Julia Symmes Cobb and Stefanie Eschenbacher; Editing by Bill Berkrot, Christian Plumb and Chris Reese)