Twin earthquakes devastate northern Venezuela as death toll fears rise

Rescuers pulled a father and son alive from rubble four days after twin earthquakes struck northern Venezuela, a sign that the search was still changing by the hour even as the death toll reached 1,450 and fears mounted that the final count could be far higher. The quakes, a magnitude 7.2 shock followed 39 seconds later by a magnitude 7.5 mainshock on June 24, ripped through communities near Morón and southeast of Yumare, leaving collapsed buildings across La Guaira and the Caribbean coast.

At least 33 people were reported rescued early in the operation, and local crews were later joined by international teams racing through damaged neighborhoods and debris fields. The hardest-hit La Guaira area near Caracas was still not fully reflected in the first government tolls, a gap that kept the scale of the disaster moving as searches continued. Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, declared a state of emergency as volunteers and specialists sifted through wreckage for anyone still alive.

The U.S. Geological Survey’s preliminary impact assessment issued a red alert and put the odds of at least 10,000 fatalities at 42 percent, with its probabilistic model stretching as high as 100,000 deaths. The agency said the twin rupture was unusually powerful for the region and noted that only seven magnitude-6-or-larger earthquakes had struck within 250 kilometers of the June 24 epicenters over the past century. It also said quakes of this size typically break a fault zone about 150 kilometers long and 20 kilometers wide, a footprint that helps explain why damage can spread far beyond the epicenter.

History gave little comfort. The 1967 Caracas earthquake killed roughly 236 people and brought down multiple high-rise buildings, while the 1997 northeastern Venezuela earthquake killed 73. The 1900 central-coast quake is another grim reference point, with around 25 deaths reported. In the present disaster, the mix of missing people, collapsed structures, and hard-to-reach coastal areas suggested the toll could take weeks to settle, even as every new survivor changed the count and the search.