Venezuela sends heavy machines to quake-hit La Guaira amid criticism

Venezuelan authorities sent more than 100 heavy machines to La Guaira after residents complained that crews were still digging through wreckage with their hands and improvised tools. The deployment came as criticism mounted over the pace of the response in the hardest-hit state, where acting President Delcy Rodríguez called the area a disaster zone.

The emergency began on Wednesday, June 24, when two powerful earthquakes struck less than a minute apart, measuring 7.2 and 7.5. The twin tremors, centered about 160 kilometers west of Caracas, were among the strongest to hit Venezuela in more than a century and devastated neighborhoods around the capital and along the coast.

In La Guaira, at least 100 buildings were destroyed, including high-rise apartments, and the damage forced the closure of Caracas’s main airport in the state. Jennifer Palacios said her 6-year-old son and five other relatives were buried in the Hugo Chávez housing complex, where collapsed slabs left residents pleading for cranes and other lifting equipment instead of the bare hands and hand tools many were using to search for survivors.

Officials put the disaster at at least 188 dead, 1,520 injured and 157 missing. Officials later raised the death toll to 235 and the number of injured to about 4,300, while hundreds were still trapped under rubble and many more remained unaccounted for. At least eight hospitals were damaged, adding strain to a response that was already trying to work around widespread power shortages in the worst-hit areas.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the United States was deploying search teams, medical resources and humanitarian aid, while volunteers from Caracas and Valencia carried water, food and other supplies by motorcycle into neighborhoods cut off by damaged roads and debris. The crisis hit a country already weakened by years of economic turmoil, and volunteers from Caracas and Valencia carried water, food and other supplies by motorcycle into neighborhoods cut off by damaged roads and debris.