CARACAS—At first, María González thought the shaking was no worse than the tremors Venezuela’s coastal communities sometimes feel. Within seconds on Wednesday evening, however, the concrete walls of her apartment building in La Guaira began to split, stairwells collapsed, and the street outside filled with dust so thick she could not see her own hands.
“I just ran without looking back,” she said in a brief account shared by local emergency volunteers and later relayed by aid workers assisting displaced families. “When I stopped, the building was gone.”
González is among thousands of survivors trying to rebuild routines after twin earthquakes struck Venezuela’s northern coast, killing at least 1,400 people and displacing many more, according to official figures cited by authorities and international humanitarian assessments. Entire neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble, while aftershocks continue to force families to sleep in open plazas and makeshift shelters.
The earthquakes, measuring magnitude 7.2 and 7.5, hit within seconds of each other, collapsing residential blocks, damaging hospitals and cutting electricity and water supplies across parts of La Guaira and surrounding coastal states. Emergency services say access to several districts remains difficult due to debris, damaged roads and unstable structures.
For survivors, the immediate crisis has shifted into a slower struggle for recovery—searching for relatives, waiting for news outside emergency coordination centers, and returning to flattened homes to salvage documents, clothing and photographs.
In one temporary shelter set up in a schoolyard in La Guaira, families described nights punctuated by aftershocks and the constant sound of rescue machinery in nearby streets. Volunteers have been distributing water and basic medical supplies while local authorities coordinate identification of the dead and injured.
“We are still hearing from people who believe their relatives may be trapped,” one rescue worker involved in operations in the coastal zone said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. “Every hour matters, but access is still very difficult in some areas.”
International rescue teams have joined local firefighters and military units in searching unstable buildings, often working alongside residents using their hands and basic tools to clear debris in densely packed neighborhoods.
As of Saturday, rescue and recovery operations were continuing across multiple affected states, with authorities saying casualty and missing-person figures remain provisional as teams reach previously inaccessible areas and continue verification efforts.
