Venezuela earthquake death toll tops 500 as rescuers search ruins

Venezuela’s earthquake death toll rose to 589 on Friday, with 2,980 people injured as rescuers searched collapsed buildings and hospitals strained under a widening emergency. Acting President Delcy Rodríguez announced the update as international rescue teams arrived to help retrieve survivors and bodies.

The disaster began on June 24, when two major earthquakes measuring 7.2 and 7.5 struck north-central Venezuela about 39 seconds apart. The U.N. described the event as a rare seismic doublet and said it was among the strongest earthquakes to hit the country in more than a century. Buildings collapsed in Caracas and surrounding states, power was disrupted, hospitals were knocked out of service and a state of emergency was declared.

The human toll was still shifting by the hour. Earlier on Friday, U.N. reporting said at least 235 people had been confirmed dead, while Jorge Rodríguez, president of the National Assembly, had previously put the toll at 188 dead, 1,520 injured and 157 missing. One account said a website tracking missing people listed 50,000 unaccounted for, underscoring how quickly the emergency was outpacing official counts.

The immediate crisis is now as much about displacement as collapse. Residents have been sleeping in streets, plazas and cars as damaged neighborhoods lose electricity, medical care and other basic services. The U.N. said nearly 8 million people in Venezuela were already in need of humanitarian support before the earthquakes, leaving emergency crews to work inside an already fragile aid system.

La Guaira appeared to be the hardest-hit state, Delcy Rodríguez said, while Yaracuy state was also among the affected areas. Those details are shaping the next 72 hours: getting generators into hospitals, clearing roads for ambulances, finding temporary shelter for families who cannot return home, and moving heavy rescue equipment into districts where structures remain unstable.

The scale of the destruction has drawn comparisons to the 1967 Caracas earthquake, which killed 225 to 300 people and injured about 1,536. This time, the death toll has already passed that benchmark, and U.S. Geological Survey modeling indicated it could still rise sharply as crews work through the ruins.