Venezuela volunteers race to aid quake victims as death toll climbs

Volunteers in La Guaira kept hauling people out of collapsed buildings by hand and ferrying medical supplies on motorcycles as Venezuela’s death toll from twin quakes climbed to 1,430 and families reported at least 68,900 missing. In neighborhoods where heavy equipment was scarce and official crews were limited, residents turned shovels, hand tools and bare hands into the main rescue line. Officials later restricted access to La Guaira to official and registered response teams because clogged roads were slowing rescue work.

The earthquakes struck northern Venezuela on June 24, first a magnitude 7.2 tremor and then, about 39 seconds later, a larger magnitude 7.5 quake west of Caracas. The second shock was the country’s most powerful in more than a century. By June 26, the government counted 920 people dead, 3,360 injured, 172 trapped and more than 50,000 missing.

The losses have hit a country where the humanitarian strain was already deep. The International Rescue Committee put the prequake need at more than 8 million people in Venezuela and warned that damaged infrastructure and limited civil response capacity would stretch recovery into weeks or months. A United Nations report put direct damage from the two quakes at about $6.7 billion.

In La Guaira, residents and volunteers kept working through the wreckage as supply lines were improvised block by block. Motorcycles were moving aid from Caracas and Valencia, carrying water, medicine and other essentials into areas where road access had become a bottleneck. Families and neighbors, not state agencies, were often the first to reach trapped people in the hardest-hit areas.

The U.S. Department of State is deploying a regional Disaster Assistance Response Team and urban search-and-rescue teams. Direct Relief is supporting Spanish rescuers from Bomberos Unidos Sin Fronteras and prepositioning first aid, hygiene items, medicines and chronic-disease drugs. Relief groups in South Florida are also collecting food, water, hygiene supplies and medical necessities for shipment to Venezuela, while Global Empowerment Mission is working with Caritas Venezuela to gather emergency relief items.