Four days after two major earthquakes shook Venezuela, the official death toll from the disaster has reached 1,450, the country’s National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez confirmed in an update released Sunday. The seismic events struck the South American nation last Wednesday, triggering widespread destruction across multiple coastal states, with La Guaira emerging as one of the hardest-hit regions.
Images captured by photojournalists on the ground just five days after the quakes show the full scale of the devastation. Heavy construction excavators are seen clearing mounds of rubble from flattened multi-story structures in Chacao, a municipality located in the heart of Venezuela’s more densely populated central region. Rescue teams have been working around the clock to comb through collapsed buildings, pulling surviving victims trapped under debris and recovering the remains of those who did not survive.
In Caraballeda, a coastal community in La Guaira state, rescue personnel have continued their search operations across leveled city blocks. Displaced residents who lost their homes in the disaster have gathered in public open spaces, including a local baseball field in Catia La Mar that has been converted into a temporary tent camp for those left homeless. Members of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces have been deployed to affected regions to support rescue efforts, coordinate humanitarian aid distribution, and maintain order amid the crisis.
Local residents have been sifting through the wreckage of their former homes to salvage any personal belongings that survived the shaking, while many survivors now face an uncertain future of displacement as emergency response teams work to meet their immediate needs for food, shelter, and medical care. As of Sunday’s update, search and rescue operations are still ongoing across the impacted regions, with authorities warning that the death toll could still shift as more bodies are recovered from collapsed infrastructure.