Venezuela quake toll rises above 1,450 as rescuers race on

The death toll from Venezuela’s twin earthquakes climbed to at least 1,450 as rescuers kept working through collapsed buildings in La Guaira, where officials still held out hope that people could be found alive. The hardest-hit state, north of Caracas, has become the center of a rescue effort shaped as much by probability as by grief: the 72-hour survival window has passed, yet crews are still pulling survivors from the rubble.

The disaster began on June 24 when a magnitude 7.2 foreshock struck northern Venezuela west of Caracas, followed 39 seconds later by a magnitude 7.5 mainshock. The U.S. Geological Survey warned then that high casualties and widespread damage were probable, and those warnings have since matched the scale of the destruction, with dozens of buildings collapsed in La Guaira and major damage also reported in Caracas. More than 130 aftershocks have kept the ground unstable and added risk for responders working in shattered concrete and twisted steel.

Acting President Delcy Rodríguez said the government still had hope and would not suspend operations in places where people were being found alive. She also announced a presidential commission to determine whether damaged buildings remain habitable, while school classes in the state were suspended for another week. Electricity service in La Guaira had been restored to 75 percent, a partial return to normalcy in a region where thousands remain displaced or waiting for news of missing relatives.

The rescue operation has widened rapidly. Authorities said more than 1,600 foreign rescuers had arrived from 24 countries, bringing search dogs and hundreds of tonnes of supplies. At the same time, the government tightened road access in La Guaira because traffic was slowing emergency vehicles, a sign of the strain on a response that is already stretched across several collapsed sites.

Even as the survival odds narrowed, teams kept finding reasons to continue. Rescuers pulled an infant alive from the rubble in La Guaira, and other survivors included a father and son and two 11-year-old boys. Those rescues have kept families returning to the debris fields, where civilian volunteers and relatives continue digging alongside professional crews. In La Guaira, each survivor recovered has become a new argument for staying, even as the death toll keeps rising and the chances of finding the living grow thinner by the hour.