We have recovered people alive. Operations are not being suspended.
Death toll nears 1,500 with 12,721 displaced and 774 buildings collapsed across Venezuela's La Guaira state following magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 earthquakes. International rescue teams including Swiss, US, Colombian, and Mexican crews work to extract survivors from rubble before the critical 72-hour window closes.
- Death toll neared 1,500; 3,150 injured; 12,721 displaced; 774 buildings collapsed
- Magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 earthquakes struck Wednesday in La Guaira, 25 miles north of Caracas
- Nearly 50,000 people listed as unaccounted for on opposition website
- 72-hour survival window closed Saturday evening; 2,600+ foreign rescue workers deployed
- U.S. pledged $150 million initially, with hundreds of millions more expected
Twin earthquakes in Venezuela have killed nearly 1,500 people with tens of thousands missing. Rescue teams race against a 72-hour survival window as international aid arrives in the hardest-hit coastal state.
By Sunday morning, the rubble of Venezuela's coastal state was still moving. Rescue workers with dogs and scanners picked through collapsed buildings in La Guaira, about 25 miles north of Caracas, searching for the living among the dead. Two earthquakes—one measuring 7.2, the other 7.5—had struck the country on Wednesday, and now, three days later, the window for finding survivors alive was closing fast.
The death toll had climbed to nearly 1,500 people. Another 3,150 were injured. Twelve thousand seven hundred twenty-one had lost their homes. Seven hundred seventy-four buildings had come down into piles of sand and concrete. But the official count of the missing—hundreds, according to government statements—masked a grimmer reality: opposition websites listed almost 50,000 people unaccounted for, a figure that had barely budged from 55,000 the day before.
Interim President Delcy Rodriguez, who had taken power after her predecessor was removed in a U.S. raid earlier in the year, stood before cameras on Sunday and spoke of hope. "We have recovered people alive," she said, flanked by her ministers. "Operations are not being suspended." The electricity in La Guaira had been restored to 75 percent. Schools would remain closed for another week. A presidential commission would assess which buildings could be inhabited again. The machinery of governance was grinding forward, even as the machinery of rescue raced against time.
More than 2,600 foreign rescue workers had arrived in the state by then—Swiss teams with search dogs, American crews, Colombian rescuers, Mexican teams. On Saturday evening, at least 33 people had been pulled from the rubble alive, including several children. A father and his son emerged from a collapsed building on Sunday. An 11-year-old boy named Moises, trapped three meters deep in the debris, was extracted by Colombian rescuers with a broken arm and cloth over his eyes to shield them from daylight. His mother and sister had not survived. An infant, wrapped in a blanket and crying, was removed by U.S. crews and posted to social media as proof that rescue was possible. Another 11-year-old boy was carried out on a stretcher by Mexican workers.
But Sebastian Eugster, who led the Swiss rescue team of 80 people, delivered the hard truth: there was a window of roughly 72 hours after an earthquake during which the probability of finding survivors alive remained high. After that, it dropped sharply. Saturday evening had marked the end of that window. His team had found multiple people alive in the rubble using their search dogs, but had not been able to extract them in time to save them.
The U.S. Geological Survey had estimated that the two quakes could have killed more than 10,000 people—a figure that would place them among Latin America's deadliest earthquakes in a century. The actual toll, at 1,500, was lower, but still catastrophic for a country already fractured by political upheaval and economic collapse. The government, which had initially welcomed civilian volunteers ferrying aid into La Guaira, later tightened access to the roads, saying the traffic was slowing emergency vehicles.
International support was mobilizing. The Trump administration had already committed $150 million in aid, with a funding package worth hundreds of millions more expected to be announced within days. Pope Leo, speaking at the Angelus in Rome on Sunday, expressed his closeness to the Venezuelan people and gratitude for the rescue workers. But the political landscape remained volatile. Maria Corina Machado, the opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, announced plans to return to Venezuela, where she had been hiding since the disputed 2024 presidential election. A White House official told Reuters that her timing was frustrating senior officials in Washington—it was too soon after the disaster for such a move.
Meanwhile, Venezuela's largest oil refinery, capable of processing 645,000 barrels per day, shut down operations on Sunday after a power outage in the western state of Falcon. The cascading failures of infrastructure, the political tensions surfacing even as bodies were still being pulled from rubble, the race against a biological clock that could not be stopped—all of it pointed to a country in the early stages of a much longer crisis than the earthquakes themselves.
Citas Notables
There exists a window of roughly three days, 72 hours, where the probability afterwards decreases that you can save people alive.— Sebastian Eugster, leader of the Swiss rescue team
We are in critical hours, in crucial hours to continue rescuing lives and to build camps where those people who have lost their homes can stay.— Jorge Rodriguez, president of the National Assembly
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Why does the 72-hour window matter so much? Is it just about physical survival, or something else?
It's about the body's ability to sustain itself under stress. After three days without water, without air, without movement, the human organism begins to fail in ways that rescue can't reverse. The Swiss team leader was saying they found people alive in the rubble but couldn't extract them before that window closed. They were there. They just couldn't be saved.
So the official death toll of 1,500 might be incomplete.
Almost certainly. The government said hundreds were missing. The opposition website listed 50,000 unaccounted for. Those aren't the same thing. Some of those 50,000 might be in hospitals, or with family, or simply not yet accounted for in the chaos. But the gap between the official count and the opposition count tells you something about who controls the narrative.
The interim president kept talking about hope and restoration. Was that genuine, or political theater?
Both, probably. Rodriguez has been in power for less than six months after a contested transition. She needs to project control and competence. But she also genuinely has rescue teams working around the clock. The hope she expressed wasn't false—it was just bounded by reality. By Sunday, that 72-hour window was closing.
What about the oil refinery shutting down? How does that fit into the disaster?
It's the next disaster, waiting. Venezuela's economy depends on oil exports. A major refinery going offline because of a power outage means less revenue, less fuel for the country, more pressure on an already fragile system. The earthquakes didn't cause that failure—they just exposed how little margin for error the country has.
And Maria Corina Machado trying to return home—why would she do that now?
Because she sees an opening. The government is weakened, distracted, focused on rescue. But Washington thinks it's too soon, too opportunistic. It's the kind of move that could destabilize things further, or it could be seen as a leader returning to her people in crisis. The timing is everything, and everyone disagrees on what the right timing is.