Venezuela deaths rise amid search for quake survivors

Volunteers in Venezuela search for possible victims in a collapsed building following twin earthquakes in Caraballeda, La Guaira state, some 40 km northeast of Caracas. — Volunteers in Venezuela search for possible victims in a collapsed building following twin earthquakes in Caraballeda

(Image credit: Federico Parra / AFP via Getty Images)

What happened

Acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez on Friday morning raised the official death toll from Wednesday’s powerful back-to-back earthquakes to 589, with at least 4,300 injured and hundreds more missing or trapped under collapsed buildings. With international aid beginning to arrive, “rescue crews and residents dug through rubble in an increasingly desperate search for survivors,” The New York Times said. The “first 48 to 72 hours after a quake are widely regarded as the ‘golden’ window to reach people buried alive,” CNN said.

The magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 earthquakes “hit a country already weakened by years of economic turmoil” that “left much of its infrastructure fragile and complicated rescue efforts as aftershocks rattled the capital and surrounding coastal areas,” Reuters said. “Affected residents have nowhere to go,” CNN said, and many Venezuelans “are enduring a second night out on the streets” near damaged and collapsed apartment buildings. “They’ve pulled out a lot of dead people,” La Guaira resident Yorliana Colmenares told the Times. “Injured people, children, animals.”

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Rafi Schwartz has worked as a politics writer at The Week since 2022, where he covers elections, Congress and the White House. He was previously a contributing writer with Mic focusing largely on politics, a senior writer with Splinter News, a staff writer for Fusion's news lab, and the managing editor of Heeb Magazine, a Jewish life and culture publication. Rafi's work has appeared in Rolling Stone, GOOD and The Forward, among others.