Nearly 3,000 people are now confirmed dead after Venezuela’s twin earthquakes, official figures show, as international rescue teams begin to scale back the painstaking search for survivors trapped beneath the rubble.
The death toll rose by more than 300 since Friday, reaching 2,954 today in the aftermath of the 24 June disaster that forced thousands of residents onto the streets and into makeshift shelter camps.
Tens of thousands more remain missing.
The quake sequence—described as one of Latin America’s worst earthquake catastrophes—hit with particular ferocity in the coastal La Guaira area north of the capital, Caracas, where entire residential complexes were reduced to ruins.
Ten days after the back-to-back 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude shocks, rescue operations are increasingly shifting toward recovery as teams prepare to end searches for survivors, even as families continue trying to retrieve the bodies of loved ones from collapsed buildings.
In earthquakes, the most critical period for finding survivors typically closes after 72 hours, although rescuers have still pulled a small number of people out alive this week.
In what appeared to signal the drawdown of the international effort, interim President Delcy Rodriquez held a medal ceremony for visiting rescue teams—awards that also extended to some of the search dogs deployed in the operation.
Venezuela is enduring “a profound grief gripping our people, where families still hold out hope of finding loved ones alive, people who have lost everything,” Mr Rodriquez said.
Members of several foreign disaster response units said Saturday that they were beginning to conclude their work, including some US squads as well as teams from South America.
The Los Angeles County fire department rescue team said it is shutting down its mission after recent searches produced no signs of life, while teams from Florida and Virginia were preparing to depart over the weekend, according to the groups.
As the days pass, frustration has surfaced among many Venezuelans who accuse the government of moving too slowly in the first hours after the quake, saying relatives and neighbours had to dig for trapped family members on their own before international teams arrived.
Rodriguez has defended the government’s actions, saying authorities deployed thousands of troops and officials.
On Saturday in La Guaira, heavy machinery crews began knocking down some unstable, collapsed structures, while at other sites families continued the grim task of trying to recover bodies for funerals.
“We’re still working, still searching for bodies. We’re still going. It hasn’t been easy,” said Venezuelan volunteer Francisco Sasquia, who has been helping dig through the remains of a collapsed residence.
“We found two bodies that have already been released to their families.”
The disaster has also left a vast housing crisis in its wake: more than 16,000 Venezuelans have lost their residences in the quakes, with many now homeless.
Hospitals remain under severe strain, and experts have warned that crowded conditions raise the risk of disease outbreaks.
For Víctor Colivert, the urgency is intensely personal. He has stayed beside his nephew’s body, recovered from a building’s wreckage and now sealed in a black body bag.
He fears it could be lost amid the turmoil, and his family stopped forensic workers from taking it away.
“If I have to go to China, to wherever, but I’m not leaving him alone,” he said. “I’m going with him.”
