{"id":520900,"date":"2026-06-27T08:08:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-27T08:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/520900\/"},"modified":"2026-06-27T08:08:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T08:08:11","slug":"venezuela-quakes-kill-nearly-1000-over-50000-missing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/520900\/","title":{"rendered":"Venezuela quakes kill nearly 1,000, over 50,000 missing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Desperate Venezuelans and rescue teams are racing to find survivors after the death toll from twin earthquakes rose above 900, with foreign crews and aid only beginning to reach devastated areas nearly two days after the quakes.<\/p>\n

The government said 172 people remained trapped, 920 were dead and 3,360 injured after the quakes devastated parts of Caracas and surrounding areas on Wednesday evening.<\/a><\/p>\n

More than 50,000 people have been reported missing.<\/p>\n

Caracas residents jeered interim leader Delcy Rodriguez during her visit to a devastated neighborhood, as fury over the perceived lack of an official response mounted.<\/p>\n

United Nations aid chief Tom Fletcher said that more than 50,000 people were missing after two powerful earthquakes struck within a minute of each other on Wednesday evening, flattening buildings in the north of the country.<\/p>\n

The coastal area of La Guaira, near the capital Caracas, was the worst hit, with one building after another crumpled by the magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 quakes.<\/p>\n

Access to the disaster zone was restricted from 8pm local time last night, (11pm Irish time) Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello announced in a televised address.<\/p>\n

\"A
\nMore than 50,000 people are still reported missing in Venezuela<\/p>\n

A rescue team from Chile arrived at one residential complex in La Guaira made up of four tall buildings housing hundreds of apartments that had largely been reduced to rubble.<\/p>\n

“Unfortunately, the collapse is total, and there is little chance of finding survivors. Efforts are now focused on recovering the bodies of the deceased,” team leader Nadiomar Polanco said at the site, which resembles many others in the city.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, family members, neighbors and volunteers used their bare hands to try to dig out survivors, bemoaning the lack of heavy machinery or official help to save those trapped alive.<\/p>\n

“I am looking for my little Gael… he was only five months old,” said an anguished Marjosly Salazar, 40, whose 16-year-old daughter died in the quake. The baby and Salazar’s cousin are both missing.<\/p>\n

“Please, we need support here. We need machinery to start lifting the columns,” she said. “We haven’t seen any government officials here, none at all.”<\/p>\n

In an upscale Caracas neighborhood, Ms Rodriguez was greeted with angry chants from a crowd of people whose loved ones were trapped under the debris.<\/p>\n

“The government isn’t doing anything for the people,” they yelled from behind cordons next to a pulverized building.<\/p>\n

\"Venezuelan
\nVenezuelan Civil Protection members and firefighters rescue 21-year-old Patrick Vargas from the rubble<\/p>\n

The UN humanitarian agency OCHA said search and rescue teams from at least 17 countries were being mobilised to help find survivors.<\/p>\n

Spanish, Salvadoran, Swiss, Colombian, and Mexican rescue teams were already on the ground.<\/p>\n

Ms Rodriguez said she had recieved a call from US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio who “reaffirmed their commitment to supporting the response efforts by sending rescue workers, specialist equipment, support for temporary shelters and humanitarian aid for the affected families”.<\/p>\n

The United States said earlier it was sending a disaster response team of more than 250 personnel, including three special search-and-rescue units with dogs trained to locate people trapped beneath the rubble.<\/p>\n

A senior US military official landed in Caracas to oversee Washington’s relief efforts.<\/p>\n

“Even before the earthquakes, millions of people across Venezuela were facing food insecurity, collapsing health services, protection risks, and limited access to basic services,” the UN and other aid agencies said in a statement Friday.<\/p>\n

“The international community must not allow this emergency to deepen into a larger human tragedy.”<\/p>\n

Earthquakes of similar magnitude claimed more than 200,000 lives in Haiti in January 2010 and 73,000 lives in Kashmir in October 2005.<\/p>\n

\"Two
\nThe earthquakes struck 160km west of Caracas<\/p>\n

Those killed included 28 Portuguese nationals, five Spaniards, two Brazilians, seven Chinese nationals, one Chilean and one Italian-Venezuelan.<\/p>\n

85 Portuguese nationals and 119 Spaniards were missing or otherwise unaccounted for, according to their respective governments.<\/p>\n

The quakes were the most powerful to hit Venezuela since a 7.7-magnitude tremor struck offshore in 1900.<\/p>\n

Venezuela’s northern coast sits on a boundary between the Caribbean and South American tectonic plates, but had not experienced a major quake since 1997.<\/p>\n

Minutes of silence preceded last night’s World Cup 2026 matches to honour the victims of the tragedy.<\/p>\n

\"SEATTLE,
\nPlayers hold a moment of silence to honour the victims of Venezuela’s earthquakes before Egypt vs Iran<\/p>\n

The quakes struck a nation already weakened by decades of economic and political turmoil that has impoverished residents, driven millions abroad and weakened infrastructure.<\/p>\n

“My building is uninhabitable and now I have nothing. It’s just me and my son, and I have no family in the country,” said Suhayl Sarquiz, 50, who lost her job a few months ago.<\/p>\n

The US Geological Survey estimated more than 10,000 deaths were possible, which would make the disaster one of Latin America’s deadliest earthquakes of the last century.<\/p>\n

Nearly seven million people could be affected, the UN’s migration agency said, as it supplied emergency shelter and other relief items.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Desperate Venezuelans and rescue teams are racing to find survivors after the death toll from twin earthquakes rose…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":520901,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[246,61,60,82],"class_list":["post-520900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=520900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520900\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/520901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}