There is no way to care for them
On a Wednesday in June, twin earthquakes tore through Venezuela's coast, killing at least 920 people and exposing something that had been quietly accumulating for decades: a nation's infrastructure of care, hollowed out long before the ground ever shook. From La Guaira to Catia La Mar, the disaster did not create a crisis so much as reveal one — a healthcare system without medicines, a rescue operation without enough hands, and ordinary people arriving with shovels to find what remained of their families. What the earth broke open, time and neglect had already weakened.
- Twin earthquakes struck Venezuela's coast on Wednesday, killing at least 920 people and trapping unknown numbers beneath collapsed buildings in coastal communities near Caracas.
- Rescue operations are fracturing under their own weight — international teams are arriving, but in neighborhoods like Catia La Mar, desperate residents are calling out for anyone with a pickaxe to come and help.
- Hospitals meant to absorb the wounded are themselves in collapse: no painkillers, no anesthetics, no antibiotics, no medical gases — patients receiving care in corridors while doctors improvise with nothing.
- A pediatrician who has warned of healthcare deterioration since 1998 says plainly that the system cannot care for the injured, and that without fundamental investment, the next earthquake will find Venezuela just as unprepared.
- The crisis is landing not as a sudden catastrophe but as the final, visible consequence of decades of neglect — the earthquake did not cause the collapse; it made it impossible to look away.
Simon Medina drove to La Guaira with gloves, a shovel, and a pickaxe. He had felt the earthquakes fourteen miles away in Naiguata — enough to notice, not enough to understand. By the time he reached the coast with relatives, the scale of what had happened to his mother and brother's apartment building was impossible to deny. "It is frightening," he said, "to come across a situation like this, with your relatives inside the house."
The official death toll climbed past 920 by Friday, with thousands more injured. Venezuelan government teams were on the ground, and international rescue crews had begun to arrive. But the operation was already showing its limits. In Catia La Mar, CNN documented residents calling out for civilian volunteers — anyone with basic tools — to help move debris. Near Simón Bolívar International Airport, another heavily damaged zone, people reported that recovery efforts had stalled. The work of retrieving bodies from collapsed buildings had barely begun.
What compounded the disaster was the condition of the institutions meant to absorb it. Dr. Huníades Urbina-Medina, a pediatrician and former president of Venezuela's National Medicine Academy, had been raising alarms about the healthcare system's deterioration since 1998. Those warnings had gone unheeded. Now, patients lay in hospital corridors. Doctors worked without medical gases, without painkillers, without anesthetics or antibiotics. Beds were scarce. Disposable gowns had become luxuries. In some cases, patients were asked to purchase their own surgical supplies before operations could proceed.
"There is no way to care for them," Urbina-Medina told CNN. He understood that another earthquake would come, and that Venezuela would face the same reckoning unless hospitals were rebuilt to international standards and stocked with enough supplies to sustain at least seventy-two hours of emergency operations. That required investment, planning, and political will — none of which had materialized in the years before Wednesday's tremors. As rescue workers dug through rubble with hand tools and doctors improvised in corridors, the cost of that accumulated neglect was being counted in lives.
Simon Medina arrived in La Guaira with nothing but gloves, a shovel, and a pickaxe. His mother and brother were somewhere in the rubble of an apartment building when the twin earthquakes hit Venezuela on Wednesday. He had been fourteen miles away in Naiguata when the ground shook—hard enough that he felt it, but not hard enough to understand what was happening to the coast. By the time he reached La Guaira with relatives, the scale of the disaster had become clear. "It shook there too, but I did not know it had been that strong," he said. "It is frightening to come across a situation like this, with your relatives inside the house."
The official death toll had climbed past 920, with thousands more injured. The Venezuelan government had mobilized search and rescue teams, and international crews were beginning to arrive by Friday. But the operation was already showing its fractures. In some neighborhoods, there simply were not enough people to move the debris fast enough. In the coastal area of Catia La Mar, CNN documented residents calling out for civilian volunteers—anyone with a pickaxe and a shovel—to help clear the wreckage. Near Simón Bolívar International Airport, another heavily damaged zone, people complained that rescue efforts had stalled. The work of recovering bodies from the collapsed buildings had barely begun.
What made the crisis worse was not just the earthquake itself, but what came after. The hospitals that should have been ready to receive the wounded were themselves in collapse. Dr. Huníades Urbina-Medina, a pediatrician and former president of Venezuela's National Medicine Academy, laid out the problem with the precision of someone who had been warning about it for decades. He and his colleagues had been raising alarms about the deterioration of the healthcare system since 1998, when Hugo Chávez came to power. The warnings had gone unheeded.
Now, in the aftermath of the earthquakes, the consequences were impossible to ignore. Hospitals were so overwhelmed that patients lay in corridors. Doctors were improvising—not because they were creative, but because they had no choice. There were no medical gases. There were no painkillers. There were no anesthetics. There were no antibiotics. The shortages were not new; they had accumulated over years of neglect. Beds were scarce. Disposable gowns had become luxuries. Patients were sometimes asked to buy their own surgical supplies before they could be operated on.
Urbina-Medina spoke to CNN about what he had witnessed in the hospitals. The system, he said plainly, could not care for the injured. "There is no way to care for them," he said. The doctor understood that another earthquake could come, and when it did, Venezuela would face the same crisis again unless something changed fundamentally. Hospitals needed to be rebuilt to international standards. They needed to be stocked with supplies—enough to sustain operations for at least seventy-two hours. That required investment, planning, and will. None of those things had materialized in the years before Wednesday's tremors. Now, as rescue workers dug through rubble with hand tools and doctors worked in corridors without basic medicines, the cost of that neglect was being measured in lives.
Citas Notables
It is frightening to come across a situation like this, with your relatives inside the house.— Simon Medina, searching for his mother and brother in La Guaira
The Venezuelan healthcare system has declined progressively. We have no medical gases, analgesics, anaesthetics or antibiotics.— Dr. Huníades Urbina-Medina, pediatrician and former president of Venezuela's National Medicine Academy
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Why does a healthcare system matter so much in the immediate aftermath of an earthquake? Shouldn't rescue and recovery come first?
They're not separate things. You can pull someone from the rubble alive, but if there's no hospital bed, no antibiotics, no way to manage pain or infection, you've only delayed the outcome. The earthquake is the initial trauma. The healthcare collapse is what determines who survives what comes next.
The doctor mentions shortages of basic things—painkillers, anesthetics. How does a country reach that point?
Years of underinvestment, political neglect, economic collapse. It doesn't happen overnight. It's the accumulation of decisions not made, budgets not allocated, warnings not heeded. Urbina-Medina had been raising the alarm since 1998. Nobody listened until people started dying in corridors.
Simon Medina is digging through rubble with a pickaxe looking for his mother and brother. What does that detail tell us?
It tells us that when the official rescue operation is too slow or too thin, families become their own rescue teams. They show up with whatever tools they can find. It's desperation, but it's also the only option available to them.
Is there any indication of how long this will take to resolve?
The doctor is clear about what's needed—hospital renovation, international standards, seventy-two hours of supply stockpiles. But those are long-term fixes. In the immediate term, people are being treated in corridors without the medicines to actually help them. The crisis is unfolding in real time.