Venezuela quake rescue window narrows as aftershocks deepen crisis

Laguaira,UPDATED: Jun 30, 2026 03:54 IST

Venezuelans searched through more collapsed buildings on Monday as the window for finding survivors after last week's back-to-back earthquakes narrowed sharply. More than 1,700 people have died, according to the government, while a fresh aftershock hit the disaster zone and concerns grew over a humanitarian crisis that aid groups say could last for years.

Five days after the twin quakes, attention has turned to whether the cash-strapped government can coordinate care for the thousands left homeless. Relief organisations say the first 72 hours after a natural disaster are the most critical for rescues, though survival can last longer if people have access to food and water.

Government officials strongly defended their response amid criticism that authorities had acted too little and too slowly. In a speech on Monday, Jorge Rodrguez, head of the Venezuelan Assembly and brother of acting President Delcy Rodrguez, said electricity had been restored to 90 per cent of the hard-hit state of La Guaira. He said officials were urgently assessing unsafe buildings and had set up 15 temporary camps for displaced people.

News coverage inside Venezuela has largely avoided politically sensitive questions such as the widespread collapse of buildings, and has instead focused on rescue stories. Delcy Rodrguez, who came to power in January after US President Donald Trump's administration seized former President Nicols Maduro, posted footage on X of emergency workers pulling a man alive from the rubble after a 43-hour search. "Each life saved is a victory for hope," she wrote on X.

At the epicentre, however, families continued to wait at search sites. "We have to stay strong, even without food, without sleep," Ana Rada said as civil defence workers searched for her brother. "Until I see the body, I still have hope."

After a weekend of smaller aftershocks and what the government said were more than 600 seismic events since Wednesday's quakes, another tremor struck on Monday. The United States Geological Survey measured it at 4.6 magnitude and said it hit 27 kilometres north of Caraballeda on Venezuela's Caribbean coast, while Colombia's geological survey put it at 5.1. Jorge Rodrguez said there were no reports of fresh damage, but the tremor sent people in Caracas running into the streets. "Here we are again, back in the street. I don't know when we'll have a moment of true peace," said Concepción Hernndez, 51, after leaving her apartment building in Chacao.

Dozens of countries have offered help, and the disaster has also focused attention on the United States after its takeover of Venezuela's oil industry earlier this year. A senior State Department official said 300 US first responders were working on the ground, while two dozen C-17 military transport planes were arriving every day with supplies. The official said US financial support had crossed USD 300 million. The US military is also helping repair damage at La Guaira port to allow more relief to arrive by sea, and another team is helping manage air traffic after the quakes damaged part of the control tower at Simón Bolvar Airport in Caracas. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak publicly.

The report said it appeared unlikely that the Trump administration would grant temporary humanitarian protections to Venezuelans already in the US, as earlier administrations had done for people from countries hit by disasters such as Haiti in 2010 and El Salvador in 2001. Venezuelans have been a major focus of the administration's immigration crackdown.

Among those joining the rescue work in La Guaira was 31-year-old miner Jean Sosa, who said he had been deported from the US in January after missing an immigration court hearing and returned to Caracas last month. He said he had built a life in New York over the previous four years, working at a taco stand near Penn Station, before being detained by Department of Homeland Security officials and later moved through several detention centres. He said officials eventually left him and other deportees in southern Mexico without his passport, phone or wallet.

Sosa said he had been using his old mining pickaxe and shovel to pull people from the rubble since arriving in La Guaira on Wednesday, at a time when national rescue teams were not yet present. For the first few days, before more help arrived, survivors were taken to hospitals in private cars and on motorcycles, he said. "I'm not involved in politics, but I believe many people could have been saved if there had been equipment and support from top authorities from the very beginning," he told The Associated Press. He said he had already rescued 20 people alive. "We're working without gloves, without equipment, borrowing supplies, improvising bandages and whatever else we can."

The full scale of the destruction remained unclear. Aid groups and experts said the government's figures appeared to be a major undercount. Jorge Rodrguez said 15,866 people had been affected and 855 buildings had been damaged or destroyed. But a preliminary NASA assessment, based on radar images from the European Space Agency's Sentinel-1 satellites, estimated that 58,870 buildings had been damaged or destroyed. The United Nations said as many as 6.8 million of Venezuela's nearly 30 million people could be affected, either through displacement or loss of basic services such as electricity and water. The Venezuelan Red Cross said it expected relief work for at least 300,000 people to continue for two years.

Questions were also raised about access to information. Official updates were delivered through short televised announcements without follow-up questions from journalists. The Venezuelan press union said the Ministry of Communication had blocked at least some foreign reporters from entering La Guaira for 48 hours, citing the need "to reduce noise during rescue operations". The union urged the government to lift the restriction, saying, "Preventing on-the-ground reporting does not resolve the emergency. As hours pass, the health situation may worsen, and the country needs verified and timely information, especially the families of the victims." With mobile phone service poor and conditions chaotic, many people have turned to private digital databases to report relatives missing. One such database had more than 50,000 names, though it was not clear how many had since been found.

Firefighter Kleider Carrillo said the destruction in La Guaira was unlike anything he had seen in training. "When you study for this profession, you're trained for situations like this," he said. "But what's in textbooks is one thing. Reality is another." As rescues continued more than five days after the quakes, aftershocks, homelessness, missing persons and the scale of the damage remained at the centre of Venezuela's response.

With PTI Inputs

- Ends