Satellite photos reveal devastation after twin earthquakes hit Venezuela

Satellite photos showed the worst destruction across northern Venezuela after two powerful earthquakes struck less than a minute apart Wednesday evening, leaving collapsed apartment blocks, wrecked streets and shattered neighborhoods from Caracas to La Guaira. The twin quakes, measured at magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5, hit about 160 miles west of the capital and were described as an earthquake doublet, a rare sequence in which two similarly sized shocks strike the same area nearly at once.

By Friday, officials said the death toll had climbed to at least 920, with more than 3,300 people injured. Reuters reporting also put the number of missing people as high as 50,000, a sign the toll could still rise sharply as crews reached more damaged districts and searched through the rubble. The ruptures ran along the boundary between the South American plate and the Caribbean plate, and the scale of the damage made the disaster the strongest earthquake event to hit Venezuela in more than a century.

The satellite imagery was most revealing in Caracas and La Guaira, where destruction appeared concentrated in dense urban areas and along the coast. It also helped show where roads, apartment towers and other infrastructure had failed, giving a clearer map of the neighborhoods most likely to need urgent rescue and aid. In Yaracuy and other nearby areas, emergency crews were still assessing damage as the aftershocks and instability complicated access.

Rescue workers, soldiers, firefighters and volunteers were still digging through collapsed buildings two days later. Delcy Rodríguez met with the army’s general staff to coordinate emergency operations, while the disaster triggered a state of emergency across the country. UN agencies said they were rapidly deploying aid, support and rescue teams as international assistance began to arrive, with the hardest-hit areas likely to face the biggest obstacles in the days ahead: blocked roads, unstable structures and the slow work of finding survivors beneath the debris.