In cities across northern Venezuela, desperate residents worked side by side Thursday to dig through collapsed buildings in search of missing family members and neighbors, one day after two powerful earthquakes struck the region and left a trail of death and destruction.
The official death toll climbed to approximately 235 by late Thursday, with at least 4,300 people reported injured, according to Venezuela’s Health Minister Carlos Alvarado, who spoke to state media. Authorities expect those numbers to rise, as thousands of people remain unaccounted for and rescue operations continue around the clock.
The two earthquakes — measuring 7.2 and 7.5 in magnitude — hit Wednesday evening and rank among the most powerful to strike Venezuela in over a century. The tremors were felt across a wide stretch of the region.
Rescuers pulled survivors from the wreckage covered in dust and blood, including children and animals. Venezuelan state television broadcast dramatic footage of the rescue efforts, including one scene where a woman was pinned beneath a concrete slab with only her bare foot visible before rescuers were able to pull her out alive. However, government-organized search teams were largely absent from areas outside the capital Caracas in the early hours following the disaster.
The coastal area of La Guaira, located north of Caracas, bore some of the worst damage and the highest casualty counts. Venezuela’s primary international airport, situated in that region, was forced to close because of structural damage, making it harder to bring in outside assistance.
By Thursday morning, stunned residents surveyed a landscape of gutted buildings, furniture dangling from broken windows, and helicopters sweeping overhead. Entire structures had been flattened and roads split open by the force of the quakes.
Families plastered walls with missing-person flyers bearing photographs of loved ones, while others passed around handwritten lists of names. Venezuelans living abroad struggled to reach relatives back home as phone service across the country was severely disrupted.
In central Caracas, hundreds of people spent the night in parks, parking lots, and other open areas, too afraid to return to their homes.
Dayana Delgado, a mother of three, demanded to know where the heavy machinery that government officials had promised was, saying it was ordinary residents who were doing the digging through collapsed structures.
