Venezuela earthquake death toll passes 3,500 as recovery drags
Venezuela’s confirmed death toll from the twin earthquakes that struck the Caracas and La Guaira coast on June 24 has climbed to 3,535, with 16,740 people injured and nearly 18,000 left without housing. The two quakes, measured at magnitude 7.2 and 7.5, hit within seconds of each other and damaged or destroyed roughly 60,000 buildings.
Almost two weeks later, more than 12,800 people are sheltering in some 80 facilities, many without reliable clean water. Health workers warn of spreading diarrheal and other infectious disease in crowded shelters — the secondary toll that tends to follow a disaster of this scale when sanitation collapses.
Relief has leaned heavily on residents and civil-society groups rather than the state. “In a government in any other country, the first responder should be the state. In the case of Venezuela, the state has been the last responder,” said Carolina Jiménez of the Washington Office on Latin America. The gap matters for what comes next: with the government’s institutional capacity strained and international access limited, the pace of rehousing and disease control will likely determine whether the toll keeps rising.