CARACAS — The death toll from the twin earthquakes that devastated northwestern Venezuela on June 24 has risen to 2,295, with more than 11,267 people injured, National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez announced Wednesday at a government briefing broadcast on state television, as rescue operations stretched into their second week with tens of thousands of people still unaccounted for.
Rodriguez, who has served as the principal official voice for casualty figures since the disaster struck, gave the updated count at a midday briefing carried by VTV, Venezuela’s state broadcaster. The figure represents a sharp increase from the 1,943 deaths he reported on June 29, reflecting the pace at which search teams are still uncovering victims in the rubble of collapsed buildings across La Guaira and the capital, Caracas.
The earthquakes — a magnitude 7.2 foreshock followed just 39 seconds later by a magnitude 7.5 mainshock, both centered in the municipality of Veroes in Yaracuy state — were the strongest to strike Venezuela since a magnitude 7.7 tremor hit the region in 1900. Together they toppled more than 250 structures, according to figures released in the days after the disaster, trapping hundreds of people in the coastal port city of La Guaira, which officials described as a “disaster zone,” and in densely populated neighborhoods of Caracas.
The United States Geological Survey, using predictive modeling, had warned in the immediate aftermath that the confirmed toll was likely to climb well beyond early estimates, and forecast a substantial probability that fatalities could exceed 10,000. Rodriguez has not addressed those projections publicly, and independent verification of the official figures by journalists in the field has been complicated by severe damage to infrastructure and tight restrictions on access to La Guaira, which was militarized within days of the earthquakes. Entry to the city has required a government-issued QR code.
The humanitarian picture across affected states remained severe. The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR, in an assessment covering La Guaira, the Capital District, Miranda, Aragua and Carabobo, found that nearly four in ten survivors were living in streets, public spaces, churches or improvised shelters that fell below basic safety and hygiene standards. Food shortages in La Guaira were described as “widespread,” with basic services broken down and connectivity largely severed. The World Health Organization warned separately of an elevated risk of infectious disease among the displaced population, citing low vaccination coverage even before the earthquakes and the destruction of medical infrastructure. Healthcare workers in La Guaira — including those responsible for the entire maternal care network in the area — remain missing, leaving a critical gap in obstetric services, a WHO spokesperson said.
The International Rescue Committee noted that Venezuela was already home to nearly eight million people in need of urgent humanitarian support before the earthquakes, and that years of political crisis, economic contraction and aid budget cuts had left national institutions poorly positioned to absorb a disaster of this scale. “With national services under significant strain, essential rescue and recovery efforts may take weeks if not months,” the organization said.
Search operations have involved some 30,000 Venezuelan emergency workers alongside roughly 2,700 foreign rescue personnel and specialists from more than two dozen countries. The critical 72-hour window for finding survivors alive in rubble passed in the days immediately after the June 24 strikes, but isolated rescues continued well beyond that threshold. A three-year-old boy was pulled from debris after surviving six days, and a Colombian rescue team retrieved an 11-year-old in a separate operation. A 60-year-old woman was brought out alive after 86 hours trapped.
International financial commitments have also been announced. The United States pledged $150 million to the earthquake response through the United Nations and humanitarian groups, and deployed elite search and rescue teams in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. The European Union mobilized five million euros in emergency assistance. The Vatican sent one hundred thousand euros to Venezuela the week of the disaster.
Venezuela’s strained healthcare system, already described by doctors as chronically underfunded and unequipped before the earthquakes hit, has been tested to near-breaking point by the surge in patients. Aid groups warned in late June that the system was approaching its limit. Acting President Delcy Rodriguez had ordered the entire hospital network — public and private — to coordinate treatment of the injured in the immediate aftermath of the tremors, but reports from the field indicated that supplies and personnel remained inadequate in the hardest-hit areas.
Among those affected are more than 100 Venezuelans deported from the United States who were housed in a hotel in La Guaira at the time of the earthquakes, according to accounts reported by ABC News. The structure they were in was among those damaged in the disaster.
Rescue teams from across Latin America, Europe and Asia have contributed to the effort, with the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Latin America advocacy head, Beatriz Ochoa, noting that the longer-term challenge would require sustained international commitment. “We will need to transition to more medium- and longer-term solutions, so that people can have affordable housing and a more dignified place to sleep and to be able to rebuild their lives,” Ochoa said.
The Boconó fault system, a complex network of faults running through northwestern Venezuela along the strike-slip boundary between the Caribbean and South American tectonic plates, was the seismic source of both events. Seismologists have noted that the June 24 sequence represents a relatively uncommon “earthquake doublet,” in which two distinct earthquakes occur within seconds of one another on adjacent fault segments, with the rupture of the first likely increasing stress on the second until it gave way.
