A specialized team of Los Angeles County search and rescue personnel has been activated to respond to areas of Venezuela damaged by back-to-back powerful earthquakes.
The Los Angeles County Fire Department Urban Search and Rescue Team 2 was mobilizing to respond to the South American country after magnitude-7.2 and 7.5 earthquakes caused widespread damage. At least 164 people were killed and the search for survivors continued Thursday in the rubble of collapsed buildings.
The elite team of highly trained has been mobilized for several past natural disasters, including earthquakes and hurricanes.
It was not immediately clear when and where the team might be deployed.
At a Thursday press conference, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said search-rescue teams from Los Angeles and Virginia have been mobilized, and teams from other communities will likely be part of rescue efforts.
“That’s their most immediate need right now, is search and rescue efforts,” Rubio said. “They have much of collapsed buildings, and so they’ll need a lot of help in terms of digging through that.
“The airport there is badly damaged, so we’ll have to rely on the Department of War to deploy assets there. And then we’re also helping them with some overhead imagery, especially in coastal areas, where they don’t have full visibility over what the damage has been and what the impact has been.”
The Department of State has activated the #LACoFD USA–2 international USAR team. The team is currently mobilizing to respond to Venezuela following the devastating 7.5 and 7.2 magnitude earthquakes. pic.twitter.com/jNG4QT8eUr
— LACoFD (@LACOFD) June 25, 2026
The earthquakes that struck Wednesday evening during a national holiday were the strongest in Venezuela in more than a century. Shaking was felt throughout the region, particularly in hard-hit La Guairá north of the capital of Caracas.
The aftermath poses a significant challenge for acting President Delcy Rodriguez, who was vice president under former President Nicolas Maduro, captured earlier this year in a surprise U.S. military operation. The county has been in economic turmoil for more than a decade.
“Dozens of buildings have collapsed there … and we are currently carrying out intensive rescue operations to save lives,” Rodríguez said Wednesday.
The country of more than 28 million people sits near multiple fault lines, but straddles the South American and Caribbean plates, making earthquakes as powerful as the twin quakes Wednesday less common than in other parts of Latin America.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the first earthquake, with a magnitude of 7.2, hit west of Moron on the Caribbean coast, about 105 miles west of Caracas. It had a depth of about 14 miles. Just a minute later, USGS reported a second 7.5 magnitude earthquake, with a depth of about 6 miles and an epicenter 10 miles southwest of Moron.