Rescue efforts falter in Venezuela as earthquake death toll climbs

Rescue crews in La Guaira were racing a clock that had already begun to run out as authorities restricted access to the quake epicenter and the search was slowed by chaos and traffic. The twin earthquakes, measured at magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5 on Wednesday, June 24, flattened buildings along Venezuela’s coast and pushed the rescue operation into the narrow 48 to 72 hour window when survival chances fall sharply under rubble.

By June 27, authorities and UN agencies put the death toll at at least 1,430, with 3,238 injured and more than 51,000 missing. More than 14,000 military and police personnel were patrolling La Guaira as the government tried to restore order around the rescue zone, while state teams were scarce in some of the hardest-hit neighborhoods and civilians were digging through debris with bare hands and basic tools.

The United Nations deployed more than 2,000 rescue workers from 27 countries, backed by 44 international urban search-and-rescue teams with 2,245 specialists and 140 search dogs. Crews from the Americas and Europe joined the response. On Saturday, search teams pulled 33 people alive from collapsed buildings, including a man and his son rescued by a U.S. team from Virginia, an infant brought out alive by U.S. rescuers, and 11-year-old boys rescued separately by Colombian and Mexican crews.

The main international airport in La Guaira was closed because of damage, hospitals were full and the government put around 70,000 families at affected. A preliminary UNDP assessment put direct physical damage at about $6.7 billion, roughly 6 percent of Venezuela’s GDP, with losses ranging from $4.7 billion to $8.7 billion. It estimated that 8.6 million people were exposed to moderate to severe shaking, about 2.1 million felt the strongest tremors and 1.7 million structures were in affected areas.

The quake was among the strongest to hit Venezuela in more than a century. The last earthquake of comparable scale to strike Caracas was in 1967, when a magnitude 6.7 quake killed more than 200 people.