![\"Venezuelan](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/venezuelan-police-search-for-survivors-through-the-rubble-in-QX55TDTOSZHVXPAATB3YH4VAPA.jpg\")
<\/p>\nTensions have flared overnight as desperation grew among anguished residents of the Venezuelan state of La Guaira, where rescuers and civilians searched for earthquake survivors amid a sharply rising death toll.<\/p>\n
Venezuela\u2019s government said the number of people killed rose to 1430 Saturday morning (local time) and families reported at least 68,900 people missing, three days after the one-two punch of 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude quakes that devastated the nation.<\/p>\n
Venezuelans looking for loved ones and neighbours used shovels, heavy equipment, ropes and bare hands atop mounds of toppled concrete throughout La Guaira, one of the country\u2019s hardest-hit states.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Venezuelan police search for survivors through the rubble in La Guaira, Venezuela, Friday, June 26, 2026, two days after twin earthquake struck the country. (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n
Most of those digging were civilians who took search efforts into their own hands, and tensions peaked over inadequate response from the Venezuelan government, whose soldiers, firefighters, police and military cadets were evidently underprepared to respond to the tragedy.<\/p>\n
Frustration was only amplified by state efforts to project the image of a robust state response.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a pile of bodies over there from last night. Newborn babies. Look what time it is, and they still haven\u2019t come to recover them. <\/p>\n
![\"Residents](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/residents-and-rescue-workers-search-through-the-rubble-two-d-XFZLYTFYMFDI7ALWRWPXEO6C6Y.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Residents and rescue workers search through the rubble two days after an earthquake struck La Guaira, Venezuela, Friday, June 26, 2026. (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n
At 8pm, there were people alive down there, and they haven\u2019t bothered to rescue them. We\u2019ve located several bodies, and they haven\u2019t helped us recover them either,\u201d said Mileidy Romero, who was among those searching the rubble in the seaside town of Caraballeada. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhat are they waiting for?\u201d<\/p>\n
Aid agencies consider the first 48 to 72 hours as crucial for retrieving people alive, though that can be extended if they have access to food and water.<\/p>\n
However, a growing number of international rescue teams were joining the effort to save lives nearly 72 hours after the quake.<\/p>\n
Acting president Delcy Rodr\u00edguez said on state television that more than 14,000 members of the military and police are patrolling the area, where access is now blocked, and special permits are required to enter. <\/p>\n
![\"Venezuela's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/venezuelas-acting-president-delcy-rodriguez-center-smiles-fl-WDMQD5M2EVGFBKTR5B6XUR5FN4.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodriguez, center, smiles flanked by Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, right, and National Assembly President, her brother, Jorge Rodriguez (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n
More rescue teams sent by governments across the world arrived in Venezuela on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar International Airport, which serves Venezuela\u2019s capital, Caracas, was badly damaged in the quake. <\/p>\n
One runway was operational on Saturday as US teams worked to repair the crucial throughway, said Jeremy Lewin, a senior State Department official in charge of foreign assistance, told reporters.<\/p>\n
Anxious families wait to see if relatives survived<\/p>\n
In the state of La Guaira, just north of Caracas, Nazareth Jim\u00e9nez sobbed into a loved one’s shoulder on Friday as she watched neighbours use hammers and power tools to try to cut through slabs of concrete in a building reduced to a mountain of debris. <\/p>\n
She was wracked with anxiety as she waited to see if her siblings, nephews, nieces and friends would emerge alive.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy God, how are we going to get them out of there?\u201d Jim\u00e9nez murmured.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’re making a call for help to the government and countries across the world,\u201d she said, pleading for machinery capable of moving collapsed structures.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are still people alive in there.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Residents](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/residents-search-through-the-rubble-two-days-after-an-earthq-PWLLOFMIX5CWLBVPUBNH3K5BVU.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Residents search through the rubble two days after an earthquake struck La Guaira, Venezuela (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n
Government forces distributed food and water to survivors in La Guaira, and Rodr\u00edguez said her government was mounting a full response during these \u201ccritical hours for rescuing people alive.\u201d<\/p>\n
The disaster poses a huge challenge for Rodr\u00edguez, the former vice president who took office in January after the capture and removal of then-president Nicol\u00e1s Maduro by the US. <\/p>\n
Venezuela has been facing economic disarray for more than a decade, and many people reject the legitimacy of the political movement Rodr\u00edguez represents.<\/p>\n
The number of dead was expected to climb, and people reported tens of thousands of missing on independent digital databases. <\/p>\n
Those figures likely included people who have been incommunicado due to the lack of cellphone signals, and some reports may be duplicated.<\/p>\n
The number of injured stood at more than 3300 as of midday Friday, and authorities said they rescued 243.<\/p>\n
Search teams and foreign aid from Mexico, the US, Brazil, El Salvador, France, El Salvador and more continued to arrive to Venezuela Saturday morning to bolster recovery efforts.<\/p>\n
Lewin, the State Department official, said the US military would help coordinate flights to bring in search and rescue workers, mobile hospitals and supplies. <\/p>\n
He said two 80-person search teams were at work and a US Navy transport ship was docked off the coast of Venezuela, ready to receive airlifted survivors in need of medical attention. Lewin said it is a \u201crace against the clock\u201d to find people injured in the quakes.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are trapped under rubble, and the priority is to get the search and rescue teams and the medical professionals and others to them as quickly as possible to save lives,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Millions of people reeling<\/p>\n
The International Organisation for Migration said up to 6.76 million people could be affected, some 2 million of them in Caracas alone. <\/p>\n
The destruction was amplified by the quick succession of shallow quakes, experts said.<\/p>\n
Loyce Pace, the International Red Cross\u2019 regional director for the Americas, said \u201cpeople are still terrified to reenter what were their homes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indeed, many continued to sleep on the street.<\/p>\n
Omar Reyes said around 20 family members died.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been left alone in this life,\u201d Reyes said, walking through the rubble where two of his children were buried.<\/p>\n
In the city of Maiquetia, people lined up outside stores and pharmacies that served them one by one behind closed doors. At one point, a woman in a crowd threw herself to the ground to protect a package of diapers with her body, desperate to keep it.<\/p>\n
Traffic and throngs of motorcyclists at times disrupted search efforts. Mexican soldiers and volunteers repeatedly asked for silence to try to hear signs of life under the rubble, but bikers \u2014 civilian and uniformed \u2014 continued to honk horns and rev engines to the first responders’ frustration.<\/p>\n
Some people began to carry off basic goods such as toilet paper and food from stores in Catia La Mar, adjacent to the country\u2019s main airport. <\/p>\n
Others swarmed a civilian pickup truck that was giving out bread and water, until a soldier intervened. The parking lot of a pharmacy turned into a makeshift shelter with tarps, hammocks and tents.<\/p>\n
A few kilometres away, Yuleidy Cadenas, 28, stood across the street from a collapsed public housing building, hoping her son, mother and brother would be pulled out alive.<\/p>\n
She fled barefoot from another building as it collapsed Wednesday and found her mother\u2019s 12-floor apartment tower had pancaked.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got on top of the rubble and told them to yell back, and nobody did, not my brother, nor my son or my mother,\u201d Cadenas said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tensions have flared overnight as desperation grew among anguished residents of the Venezuelan state of La Guaira, where…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":499021,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[28708,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-499020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-central-south-america","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}