Event: Venezuela

On Wednesday two earthquakes, of magnitudes 7.1 and 7.5, struck seconds apart, levelling large parts of Caracas, Venezuela. On Friday, Jorge Rodriguez, the president of the country’s National Assembly, put the dead at 920 and the injured at 3,360. In La Guaira, the worst-hit State, over a hundred buildings crumpled to rubble. Geologically speaking, such destruction is, in Venezuela, an aberration. The country sits where the South American and Caribbean plates grind past one another, a boundary that slips sideways rather than thrusting upward — unlike the frequent quakes along the Pacific’s Ring of Fire. Strain here accumulates quietly, over generations, before the ground settles its accounts in a single afternoon. It is early days, but seismologists have explained the twin quakes as a ‘doublet,’ what the US Geological Survey (USGS) calls a “complex rupture-interaction”. Northern Venezuela saw a smaller doublet last year; the Türkiye-Syria earthquakes of 2023, which killed over 55,000 people, were of the same provenance. Their shallowness — under 30 kilometres — drove the fury straight into the streets above. The USGS has flagged a plausible toll exceeding 10,000, and the past is proof that such fears are likely to bear out rather than be refuted.India, which has already offered help, should make relief its first duty — search teams, medical supplies, and the unglamorous logistics of a disaster zone. But there is a lesson here that it ought not to file away and forget. This year the Bureau of Indian Standards withdrew a decade’s worth of commissioned work that found seismic hazard along the Himalayan front badly underestimated — a revision that nearly doubled design forces in the highest zones and added a sixth zone to a map that stopped at five. It was shelved after a Cabinet Secretariat order warned the standards “materially affected” ongoing…

AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTYou have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.The Trump administration said it would commit aid, at a time when it has been expanding U.S. commercial interests in Venezuela beyond oil.Rescue workers and civilians looking for people trapped under debris in La Guaira, Venezuela, after two large earthquakes.Credit...Adriana Loureiro Fernandez for The New York TimesEdward Wong and Michael CrowleyEdward Wong and Michael Crowley have covered President Trump’s policies across Latin America, including in Venezuela.June 26, 2026In early January, Secretary of State Marco Rubio huddled with President Trump and U.S. generals to oversee a nighttime assault on Venezuela that resulted in the ouster of the country’s autocratic leader, Nicolás Maduro.On Thursday, Mr. Rubio found himself explaining how the United States would help Venezuela after a devastating double earthquake left many citizens trapped under rubble.The United States, he said, would provide a “whole-of-government response.”“We’re already deploying search-and-rescue teams from Fairfax County, Virginia, and Los Angeles,” he told reporters. “There’ll be some others we’ll add. That’s their most immediate need right now, is search and rescue efforts.”“The airport there is badly damaged, so we’ll have to rely on the Department of War to deploy assets there,” he added, using the Trump administration’s preferred name for the Defense Department. “And then we’re also helping them with some overhead imagery.”Mr. Rubio’s remarks were intended to support Mr. Trump’s message on social media that the United States was “ready, willing and able to help.” They also signaled that the administration wanted the world to know that its interests in Venezuela could go beyond oil, despite the president’s aggressive assertions that his country deserved to take the Caribbean nation’s most valuable resource.On Friday, Mr. Trump mentioned the oil in a…

You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.Many of the hospitals and clinics left standing after Venezuela’s back-to-back earthquakes have been overwhelmed.Credit...Fabiola Ferrero for The New York TimesA snapshot of the toll of the country’s twin quakes.Many of the hospitals and clinics left standing after Venezuela’s back-to-back earthquakes have been overwhelmed.Credit...Fabiola Ferrero for The New York TimesJune 26, 2026Children with battered faces and broken legs. A patient facing his third night on a gurney in a hospital yard, his IV held up by a tree branch. A morgue designed to hold two bodies was packed with 30. Deprived of electricity, the morgue’s refrigeration units failed, and the heat accelerated decomposition. The stench was overwhelming.Two days after a pair of history-making earthquakes struck Venezuela, hospitals and morgues in Caracas and the nearby state of La Guaira were overwhelmed with patients, with the dead and with family members hoping to find their loved ones alive. Doctors who have spent years working in woefully underfunded public hospitals said they had never seen so much pain at once.The scene inside and outside the region’s hospitals on Friday laid bare just how unprepared Venezuela’s government was for this disaster. The country’s medical system has been one of the chief victims of an economic crisis and chronic government mismanagement that dates back more than a decade.On Friday, patients lay outside in hospital yards; rubble surrounded clinics. And in the absence of state help, citizens and medical volunteers showed up, carrying water, medicines and supplies.ImagePatients wait outside of an overcrowded hospital in La Guaira.Credit...Adriana Loureiro Fernandez for The New York TimesImageAn earthquake survivor holds her 2-month old baby outside of a makeshift medical tent set up by a group of…

Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, has vowed to fight to save “as many people as possible” as the official death toll from the country’s worst earthquake in more than a century almost doubled, but frustration was growing at the perceived sluggishness of the government’s response.Rodríguez’s brother, Jorge, the president of the national assembly, said on Friday that the official number of dead had risen to 920. Delcy Rodríguez had earlier said that almost 3,000 people were injured. Speaking during a tour of La Guaira, the most devastated region, she said foreign search and rescue groups were starting to arrive.“We offer our solidarity [to families of victims],” Rodríguez said late on Thursday outside the ruins of an eight-floor seafront hotel that had been obliterated by twin 7.2- and 7.5-magnitude quakes.United Nations aid chief Tom Fletcher told the AFP news agency that more than 50,000 people were missing after two powerful earthquakes struck within a minute of each other on Wednesday evening, flattening buildings in the north of the country.Volunteer searchers and the relatives of the many missing voiced exasperation and anger at the lack of an official response as they waited for government teams.Rubble in the city of Caraballeda, six miles east of La Guaira along Venezuela’s Caribbean coast. Photograph: Federico Parra/AFP/GettyRotny Bombart, a 33-year-old paramedic, said he had spent five hours hunting for his mother, María Eugenia, in a collapsed tower block in La Guaira called OPP 33. “It has 15 floors. Or rather, it used to, because there’s nothing left of it now,” Bombart said after being treated at a public hospital in the capital, Caracas, for a gash to his right arm sustained during the search.Bombart said that at first no government emergency workers had appeared at the scene. In their absence, desperate local people seized the initiative,…

AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTYou have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.Rescue Teams and Residents Alike Race to Save Survivors of Venezuela’s EarthquakesFacing criticism from residents that it was not doing enough to help, the Venezuelan government said it had dispatched more than 100 heavy machines to clear debris.A survivor on Friday. About 1,400 buildings had been damaged, including 13 hospitals and 25 shopping centers.Credit...Fabiola Ferrero for The New York TimesJune 26, 2026Survivors clawed through mountains of brick and concrete with their bare hands across Venezuela’s earthquake-shattered north on Friday, hushing each other to listen for whispers of life and praying to reach people still trapped under the ruins.At a small hospital in La Guaira, the worst-hit state, Juan David Arsia, 17, said he had spent 21 hours under rubble. “I was there with my mom, and I could hear her screaming,” he said. “I would yell to her, ‘Don’t give up, mom, have faith — don’t give up.’”Under the wreckage with a fractured leg, Mr. Arsia could hear other trapped people screaming, he said, until the sounds stopped in the middle of the night. Hours later, he heard people moving above the rubble and began shouting for help, leading his neighbors to pull him and his mother free.Rescue teams from at least 10 countries were racing to help Venezuela in its search-and-recovery efforts after devastating twin earthquakes on Wednesday, but they faced stark hurdles even reaching the disaster zone. The 7.2- and 7.5-magnitude quakes damaged the international airport, split open roads and overwhelmed Venezuela’s hollowed-out emergency services.The country’s infrastructure had already been weakened by corruption and a decade-long economic depression. With little heavy machinery to clear rubble and few medical supplies to help the wounded,…

BBC reporter Vanessa Silva visited the state of La Guaira in Venezuela, one of the areas worst affected by the twin earthquakes that rocked the country on Wednesday.Natacha Díaz, a mother almost voiceless, told the BBC that her two daughters, aged 22 and 23, are trapped in a small shopping centre where they worked as manicurists. She cried as she showed a photo of them on her mobile phone."I just want them back with me. They are all I have", Natacha said.There are fears many people still trapped under the rubble, and it is likely that the death toll will climb further as rescue efforts continue.International rescue teams, bringing along sniffer dogs, have joined the search for survivors.

AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTThe nation’s armed forces seemed to arrive late into the emergency response — with an emphasis on controlling traffic, even as bodies remained buried under rubble.Members of the Bolivarian National Guard of Venezuela searching for survivors in Pinto Salinas, Venezuela, on Wednesday after two earthquakes hit the country earlier that afternoon.Credit...Adriana Loureiro Fernandez for The New York TimesJune 26, 2026When President Delcy Rodríguez announced on Friday that she would “militarize” La Guaira, the state that was hit hardest by two earthquakes this week, some Venezuelans hoped it would mean heavy machines, well-organized rescue missions and swift help for the devastated region.Instead, many were left wondering what military forces had been ordered to do.In La Guaira, military personnel, some with long guns, could be seen mainly on avenues, helping to keep traffic moving and away from certain areas. In other northern towns, including Catia Las Mar, Los Corales and Caraballeda, security personnel were also seen directing traffic, patrolling the streets and transporting the bodies of victims, but not helping with removing debris or searching for survivors.In the meantime, many residents tried desperately to save their loved ones and neighbors under the rubble, using shovels, pickaxes and borrowed tools. When an injured person was found, it was usually not an ambulance or official vehicle that hurried them off for medical care, but a family member’s private car.Ms. Rodríguez said in her announcement on state television that the military was in affected areas to help, and that it had cleared many roads. But she did not specify what the deployment would mean for the region, or whether soldiers would patrol the streets or impose a curfew.Faced with criticism from residents that the authorities have done too little and too slowly, the government has broadcast its efforts on official channels online and on…

AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTYou have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.Firefighters are using cellphone lights because of a flashlight shortage, and an overwhelmed hospital in the disaster zone is operating without running water, one doctor said.A woman injured in Wednesday’s earthquakes was loaded into a van to be transported from a hospital in La Guaira, Venezuela, to a hospital in Caracas, the capital, on Thursday.Credit...Fabiola Ferrero for The New York TimesJune 26, 2026The earthquakes that struck Venezuela this week exposed the fragility of the country’s emergency medical system after years of economic collapse, institutional decay and mass emigration hollowed out hospitals, ambulance services and rescue operations, according to doctors, emergency responders and humanitarian groups.In the hardest-hit coastal state of La Guaira, two of the state’s three public hospitals were knocked out of service, leaving the only functioning hospital overwhelmed and out of basic medical supplies, according to Dr. Jaime Lorenzo, the director of a nonprofit, United Doctors of Venezuela.The hospital is operating without running water, forcing staff to wash their hands and clean bloodstained floors using stored water and intravenous saline, Dr. Lorenzo said.In Caracas, the roof of one of the city’s main trauma hospitals partly collapsed during the twin quakes on Wednesday. Staff urged patients on social media not to come unless they faced life-threatening emergencies.The strain extends beyond hospitals. Venezuela has only three functioning public ambulances serving greater Caracas, said Dr. Lorenzo. He estimated that roughly 90 percent of patients from La Guaira arrived in the backs of police pickup trucks following the quakes.Power outages and telecom failures have further crippled the response. With cellphone networks down, hospitals often receive no advance warning about incoming patients, learning the severity of injuries only when…

Nearly all of Ligia Level’s family lived in a trio of apartment blocks along Hotel Avenue, a seafront sweep of palm-specked resorts and high-rise condos along Venezuela’s Caribbean coast.When a powerful “doublet” of earthquakes jolted the region on Wednesday afternoon, those buildings and the lives within them came crashing down.Level, 67, leapt from her first floor window, breaking her foot as she scrambled to safety. Her relatives appear to have had less luck.On Thursday, she sat outside one of the three buildings, Residencias Villamar, wondering if there was any chance her niece and nephew had made it out alive, perhaps by jumping from their fifth floor apartment on to a mattress outside.Level believed her mother and sister, who had lived next door in a condominium called Residencias Anna Mar, were almost certainly dead. “We’ve lost them,” she wept as she waited by the wreckage of the buildings for news – and for government help to arrive.“Please, we absolutely need international help here. Anything and anyone we can get,” she implored, as volunteers scoured the rubble for survivors in the absence of civil protection teams. “We were not prepared for something like this – we’re not used to this.”Satellite imagery shows La Guaira before and after the earthquakes. Photograph: Vantor/ReutersHotel Avenue is in La Guaira, a rundown port city surrounding Venezuela’s main international airport that has been shattered by the devastating earthquake.In a televised address, Venezuela’s interim leader, Delcy Rodríguez, declared La Guaira the area worst affected by what she called an “unprecedented seismic phenomenon” and lamented the “utter tragedy” that had befallen the region’s residents. “We hope to save as many lives as possible,” Rodríguez vowed while touring “ground zero” on Thursday, promising that international rescue teams were starting to arrive.The acting president’s brother, Jorge Rodríguez, the president of the…

At least 235 people were killed when two major earthquakes rocked Venezuela on Wednesday evening, the country's health authorities say. A day after the 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude quakes, the BBC's Vanessa Silva is in Caracas as rescuers continue to search through the rubble for survivors.More on this story