{"id":659660,"date":"2026-06-26T16:57:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T16:57:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/659660\/"},"modified":"2026-06-26T16:57:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T16:57:12","slug":"venezuela-death-toll-doubles-as-interim-president-vows-to-save-as-many-people-as-possible-venezuela","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/659660\/","title":{"rendered":"Venezuela death toll doubles as interim president vows to save \u2018as many people as possible\u2019 | Venezuela"},"content":{"rendered":"

Venezuela\u2019s interim president, Delcy Rodr\u00edguez<\/a>, has vowed to fight to save \u201cas many people as possible\u201d as the official death toll from the country\u2019s worst earthquake in more than a century almost doubled, but frustration was growing at the perceived sluggishness of the government\u2019s response.<\/p>\n

Rodr\u00edguez said on Friday that the official death toll had risen to 589, with nearly 3,000 people injured. Speaking during a tour of La Guaira<\/a>, the most devastated region, Rodr\u00edguez said foreign search and rescue groups were starting to arrive.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe offer our solidarity [to families of victims],\u201d she said<\/a> late on Thursday outside the ruins of an eight-floor seafront hotel that had been obliterated by twin 7.2- and 7.5-magnitude quakes.<\/p>\n

Volunteer searchers and the relatives of the many missing voiced exasperation and anger at the lack of an official response as they waited for government teams.<\/p>\n

People walk amid rubble after the twin earthquake in Caraballeda, La Guaira state, about 40km north-east of Caracas. Photograph: Federico Parra\/AFP\/Getty<\/p>\n

Rotny Bombart, a 33-year-old paramedic, said he had spent five hours hunting for his mother, Mar\u00eda Eugenia, in a collapsed tower block in La Guaira called OPP 33. \u201cIt has 15 floors. Or rather, it used to, because there\u2019s nothing left of it now,\u201d Bombart said after being treated at a public hospital in the capital, Caracas, for a gash to his right arm sustained during the search.<\/p>\n

Bombart said that at first no government emergency workers had appeared at the scene. In their absence, desperate local people seized the initiative, picking their way through the rubble with bare hands and basic tools. \u201cYou\u2019re prepared for emergencies, but not for this. Nothing prepares you for this,\u201d he said, recalling seeing dismembered bodies, dead people and children in the wreckage.<\/p>\n

\"AerialAerial footage shows scale of destruction after deadly earthquakes in Venezuela \u2013 video<\/p>\n

Another searcher, Diego Gonz\u00e1lez, said he had spent hours digging his 34-year-old cousin, Helari Rodr\u00edguez, out of the debris of Residencias Belo Horizonte, an apartment building in the seaside town of Catia La Mar.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt took us four hours to pull her out of the rubble with the help of some friends,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople are working with their bare hands. Tools are essential. But Catia La Mar is destroyed \u2013 very few buildings will have survived.\u201d<\/p>\n

Earthquake map<\/a><\/p>\n

On Thursday, the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, said that on Donald Trump\u2019s orders he had mobilised troops to \u201csupport the Venezuelan people\u201d in their hour of need. \u201cOur mission is clear: save lives and rapidly deliver critical aid where it is most needed,\u201d Hegseth tweeted.<\/p>\n

US Southern Command said Marine Corps Maj Gen Kevin J Jarrard had landed in Caracas to oversee the use of \u201cthe US military\u2019s unparalleled logistical and operational capabilities\u201d to help with the search. Other countries, including Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Mexico, Spain, France, Turkey and Switzerland, have offered to send humanitarian aid and rescue teams.<\/p>\n

Thirty-six hours after the back-to-back earthquakes devastated Venezuela\u2019s northern coast, there was scant sign of government help reaching many areas, exposing how years of economic misrule and corruption have left authorities woefully unprepared for a disaster on this scale.<\/p>\n

\"DesperateDesperate search for survivors after deadly earthquakes hit Venezuela – The Latest<\/p>\n

Chaotic footage from the Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda Vargas hospital in La Guaira captured the extent to which Venezuela\u2019s public health system had withered<\/a> as Rodr\u00edguez\u2019s predecessor, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, led the country into economic freefall. Patients could be seen lying on the floor as they waited for treatment in the facility\u2019s car park.<\/p>\n

Orlando P\u00e9rez, a Latin America expert at the University of North Texas at Dallas, said: \u201cIt seems they weren\u2019t prepared at all. Natural disasters reveal the true capabilities of a government because you have to respond quickly, you have to respond efficiently, you have to do search and rescue, you have to provide services in situations where it\u2019s difficult. And it seems that the government has been caught flat-footed completely.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s incredible because this is a resource-rich country,\u201d P\u00e9rez added. Venezuela boasts the world\u2019s largest proven reserves of oil but under Maduro was plunged into one of the worst peacetime economic crises in modern history.<\/p>\n

Patients lie outside a hospital evacuated after it was damaged in an earthquake in Catia La Mar. Photograph: Pedro Mattey\/AP<\/p>\n

\u201cYet you have completely degraded health infrastructure, buildings that were not built to code that collapsed very easily,\u201d P\u00e9rez said. \u201cThey have had the resources but they have squandered it. The health infrastructure in particular is very weak. Hospitals lack equipment, they lack medicine \u2013 and that is going to cost lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u200bAn opposition activist, Jes\u00fas Armas, said successive Chavista administrations had failed to invest sufficiently in the emergency and healthcare services that would have enabled them to better cope with a disaster they should have anticipated, given Venezuela\u2019s location along the boundary between the Caribbean and South American tectonic plates\u200b. \u201cE\u200bvery 50 or 70 years we have a [\u200bmajor\u200b] earthquake\u200b … We should have been prepared\u200b,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYesterday we saw people working in these\u200b [destroyed] places \u2013 people from civil protection and the police and national guard\u200b \u2013 without gloves, without helmets and without any kind of tools\u200b … \u200bSo we need all the international support \u200bpossible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u200bCompounding the problem was Venezuela\u2019s severe migration crisis, in which nearly 8 million citizens had fled abroad to escape economic crisis and political repression. \u201cA lot of doctors, a lot of engineers that we need right now, a lot of experts in civil protection and rescue operations [have all left] … This is a tragedy.\u201d <\/p>\n

Writing on X, Juan Pablo Guanipa, a prominent opposition politician, questioned why Venezuela\u2019s armed forces were not doing more to help civilian victims. \u201cSo far we have not seen real mobilisation or action [from the military] in the face of this grave situation that we are facing. We have seen families, neighbours and rescue workers trying to save lives with their own hands,\u201d Guanipa said. \u201cRight now, all of us need to be involved, the armed forces included.\u201d<\/p>\n

A volunteer carries a rescued dog across the rubble of a collapsed building in Caraballeda, La Guaira state. Photograph: Federico Parra\/AFP\/Getty<\/p>\n

P\u00e9rez said he was puzzled by reports that there had been little sign of action by Venezuela\u2019s Bolivarian national armed forces (FANB).<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cWhat I am hearing from people is that they have not seen large contingencies of FANB personnel and equipment being mobilised \u2026 We know that the FANB\u2019s capabilities had been degraded; that it was an armed force that was structured to prevent a coup. That it was top heavy with a lot of brass and not a lot of capability down in the middle and the bottom \u2013 and that it was involved in illicit activities.\u201d<\/p>\n

But even so, P\u00e9rez thought the \u201clack of coordinated response and presence seemingly of the FANB\u201d was striking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Venezuela\u2019s interim president, Delcy Rodr\u00edguez, has vowed to fight to save \u201cas many people as possible\u201d as the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":659661,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-659660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}