At least 920 dead. More than 3,300 injured. At least 172 people confirmed trapped under rubble. Over 50,000 unaccounted for on crowd-sourced tracking sites — though that figure likely reflects communication blackouts rather than confirmed casualties.
The twin Venezuela Earthquake that struck Venezuela on Wednesday — a 7.2 magnitude foreshock followed 39 seconds later by a 7.5 magnitude mainshock — are the largest recorded in the country for more than a century. The USGS estimates the final death toll could exceed 10,000.
The 72-hour mark — the window rescue experts consider critical for finding survivors under rubble — passed this morning.
La Guaira, the port city north of Caracas, has been hit hardest. “I wasn’t expecting this,” said Orianna Velásquez, a Caracas resident who travelled to Caraballeda to search for her father. “Everything looks like it’s straight out of a war zone.”
The Venezuelan government says 383 buildings, 13 hospitals, 25 shopping centres and over 1,000 other structures have been affected. The US has deployed three urban search and rescue teams, including one from Miami-Dade County. CNN’s live Venezuela coverage confirmed Mexico, El Salvador, and the Dominican Republic sent convoys. Pope Leo donated €100,000 with “further assistance to follow.”
But Venezuela’s crisis makes rescue harder than it should be. More than 200 websites are blocked in the country — one of the world’s most restricted media landscapes. Families outside Venezuela cannot reach loved ones. Families inside cannot access information about which buildings collapsed or which hospitals are functioning.
Al Jazeera’s analysis of why Caracas is so vulnerable is damning: about 80 percent of Venezuela’s population lives in quake-prone areas, and many live in houses not built to withstand strong earthquakes. In Altamira, many collapsed buildings were constructed on sediments — material that amplifies seismic waves and turns moderate shaking into catastrophic collapse.
Al Jazeera’s 72-hour explainer noted that no news from rural areas is almost always bad news — the biggest impacts are typically in communities with the highest shaking intensity but the worst communications. Roads become blocked, power fails, and telephone networks go dark.
For Pakistan — which lost 73,000 people in the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and continues to construct informal settlements in active seismic zones — the lesson from Caracas is the same one it has been for twenty years: earthquakes do not kill people. Buildings do.
The death toll will rise. The rescue window is closing.
