Venezuela quake survivor hears son crying beneath the rubble

“I hear my son crying beneath the rubble,” one Venezuelan survivor said as crews and neighbors clawed through shattered concrete after a magnitude 7.2 foreshock and a magnitude 7.5 mainshock struck 39 seconds apart. The U.S. Geological Survey called the sequence a double event and warned that high casualties and widespread damage were probable, a warning that quickly matched the scene across the country’s northern coast.

The quakes hit west of Caracas and tore through coastal communities including La Guaira, Catia La Mar and other parts of the north where buildings collapsed and roads were left blocked by debris. Reuters reported that hundreds of people were trapped under rubble and many more were still unaccounted for, while Acting President Delcy Rodríguez said at least 164 people had died and 971 were injured in the early official count. Later live updates pushed the toll above 1,400 as aftershocks complicated the search.

Venezuela declared a state of emergency as the scale of the disaster widened. Foreign rescue teams, including Mexican soldiers, joined the effort, but the response was strained from the start. In some areas, Venezuelans began searching on their own because there were not enough government rescuers to reach every collapsed building quickly, a sign of how thin the country’s emergency capacity was when the ground kept moving.

The disaster also exposed how vulnerable homes, roads and rescue systems remain across the country’s coast and nearby states, including Carabobo, Aragua, Miranda and Yumare. The U.S. Geological Survey said strong aftershocks could follow the mainshock, adding danger for survivors already waiting for relatives in the debris. Reporting described the sequence as Venezuela’s strongest earthquake event in more than a century, a measure of both the violence of the shaking and the strain now falling on crews trying to pull people out before the toll rises further.