Venezuela quake death toll rises as families search for trapped relatives

Venezuela’s death toll from the twin earthquakes climbed to 1,430, with authorities saying 3,238 people were injured and nearly 69,000 remained missing as families in La Guaira continued searching collapsed homes and apartment blocks for trapped relatives. Rescue workers and civilians kept pulling at broken concrete with shovels, ropes and bare hands while the window for finding survivors narrowed.

At La Guaira city’s Hugo Chavez housing complex, an eight-tower development that became a focal point for the search, Jennifer Palacios, 25, said her 6-year-old son and five other relatives were still buried. Residents and volunteers kept clearing debris by hand because heavy equipment was scarce, and officials ordered roads into La Guaira city closed at 8 p.m. except for official and registered response teams to keep rescue routes open. “What are they waiting for?” one woman searching in the coastal town of Caraballeda said as frustration mounted over the pace of rescue work.

The crisis deepened as a 4.9 aftershock rattled Caracas and Maracay on Friday afternoon, adding to fear in neighborhoods already damaged by the first two shocks. Delcy Rodríguez declared a state of emergency, the country closed its main airport in Caracas and suspended classes, while rescue workers in Catia La Mar pulled a man alive from the rubble two days after the quakes struck.

The earthquakes hit seconds apart on June 24, measuring 7.2 and 7.5, and Venezuelan authorities called them the country’s most powerful in more than a century. The United Nations Development Programme estimated direct physical damage at about $6.7 billion, or roughly 6 percent of gross domestic product, as more than 2,000 rescuers from 27 countries, including a British team with six specialist search dogs, began arriving to reinforce the search through the rubble.