Powerful earthquakes rock Venezuela, killing at least 32 people. Death toll is expected to rise

A pair of pow­er­ful earth­quakes rocked Venezuela, tear­ing down build­ings, clos­ing the coun­try’s main air­port and send­ing pan­icked res­i­dents of the cap­i­tal pour­ing in­to the streets. At least 32 have died, the act­ing pres­i­dent said Thurs­day, warn­ing that the toll was ex­pect­ed to rise.

Footage on state TV showed three chil­dren, cov­ered in dust but alive, pulled from the rub­ble in La Guaira state, which Act­ing Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez de­scribed as a “dis­as­ter zone” and the area hard­est hit by Wednes­day evening’s 7.2 and 7.5 mag­ni­tude earth­quakes.

Pow­er­ful back-to-back earth­quakes struck Venezuela on Wednes­day evening, col­laps­ing build­ings and send­ing pan­icked res­i­dents in­to the streets as com­mu­ni­ties across the South Amer­i­can coun­try sus­tained dam­age.

The quakes, among the strongest to strike Venezuela in more than a cen­tu­ry, could be felt through­out the re­gion, with build­ings evac­u­at­ed in places as far away as Brazil’s Ama­zon, about 1,700 kilo­me­ters (1,050 miles) from Venezuela’s cap­i­tal, Cara­cas.

While Venezuela sits near mul­ti­ple fault lines, its po­si­tion strad­dling the South Amer­i­can and Caribbean plates makes strong earth­quakes much less com­mon than in oth­er parts of Latin Amer­i­ca.

Ro­dríguez de­clared a state of emer­gency in an ad­dress to the na­tion late Wednes­day, say­ing the quakes caused dam­age in sev­er­al states. She asked health care pro­fes­sion­als to re­port to hos­pi­tals to as­sist the in­jured.

The ca­su­al­ty fig­ures she re­leased ear­ly Thurs­day — in­clud­ing at least 700 in­jured — ex­clud­ed La Guaira, which sits north of Cara­cas on the coast, and so the num­bers are ex­pect­ed to rise.

“Dozens of build­ings have col­lapsed there ... and we are cur­rent­ly car­ry­ing out in­ten­sive res­cue op­er­a­tions to save lives,” Ro­dríguez said.

Res­i­dents fled their homes in pan­ic

Tele­vi­sion broad­casts Thurs­day showed res­cue work­ers us­ing pow­er tools to work their way in­to piles of rub­ble. Many peo­ple search­ing for the miss­ing ap­peared to be reg­u­lar peo­ple, rather than pro­fes­sion­als. Col­lapsed build­ings, top­pled elec­tric poles and de­bris blocked streets.

Dur­ing the quakes, peo­ple ran from sway­ing build­ings in Cara­cas, many vis­i­bly shocked when they turned back to see de­stroyed walls that left fur­ni­ture vis­i­ble from the street. Columns of dust rose in two typ­i­cal­ly busy neigh­bor­hoods in the cap­i­tal.

“It start­ed off gen­tly and then grad­u­al­ly grew, and in the end, we all had to leave our hous­es, go out­side and gath­er to­geth­er,” Cara­cas res­i­dent Hec­tor Ric­ci said.

In­te­ri­or Min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo urged peo­ple to re­main out­side as af­ter­shocks could fur­ther dam­age struc­tures, and many peo­ple stayed on the streets for hours, some sit­ting on the ground hug­ging pets as dust gath­ered around them. Oth­ers spent the night in parked cars, sub­way sta­tions and oth­er pub­lic places.

Parts of the cap­i­tal lost pow­er and cell­phone cov­er­age, and the earth­quakes dam­aged and closed Simón Bolí­var In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, the coun­try’s main air­port, Ro­dríguez said.

In Cara­cas, sub­way ser­vices were sus­pend­ed and nat­ur­al gas shut off, she said. Class­es will al­so be can­celed for sev­er­al days, and the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion said some school build­ings would be used as shel­ters and do­na­tion cen­ters.

Rober­to Gamas, an­oth­er Cara­cas res­i­dent, said the build­ing he was in “shook from side to side. Un­re­al. The force was in­cred­i­bly strong.”

The lack of cell­phone sig­nal in parts of Venezuela deep­ened the dis­tress of many fam­i­lies, par­tic­u­lar­ly those among the more than 7.7 mil­lion peo­ple who have left the coun­try dur­ing its pro­tract­ed cri­sis and who strug­gled to reach rel­a­tives in­side the coun­try.

Venezuela op­po­si­tion leader María Co­ri­na Macha­do, her­self in ex­ile, sent wish­es on X for “strength, seren­i­ty, and sol­i­dar­i­ty.”

Venezuela was hit twice by large quakes

The U.S. Ge­o­log­i­cal Sur­vey said the first earth­quake, with a mag­ni­tude of 7.2, hit west of Mo­ron on the Caribbean coast, about 170 kilo­me­ters (105 miles) west of Cara­cas. It had a depth of 22 kilo­me­ters (about 14 miles).

The US­GS re­port­ed a 7.5 mag­ni­tude earth­quake just a minute lat­er, with a depth of 10 kilo­me­ters (about 6 miles) and an epi­cen­ter 16 kilo­me­ters (10 miles) south­west of Mo­ron.

Sev­er­al gov­ern­ments of­fered as­sis­tance

Of­fers of help poured in from coun­tries around the world.

U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Ru­bio said in a post on X ear­ly Thurs­day that the Unit­ed States is “im­me­di­ate­ly de­ploy­ing search and res­cue teams, med­ical re­sources, and hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance to Venezuela.”

Ro­dríguez — who be­came act­ing pres­i­dent af­ter an Amer­i­can mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion cap­tured her pre­de­ces­sor, Nicolás Maduro, and brought him to the U.S. to stand tri­al — thanked U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump. She said in an X post lat­er that she spoke with Ru­bio by phone with­out shar­ing de­tails. She al­so ex­pressed thanks to the lead­ers of var­i­ous na­tions who have sent mes­sages of sup­port and of­fers of help.

Ecuador or­dered the de­liv­ery of hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid, and Ro­dríguez said Qatar, Mex­i­co and El Sal­vador had al­ready sent res­cue per­son­nel.

“We send you all our sol­i­dar­i­ty and our prayers. Stay strong, Venezuela,” El Sal­vador Pres­i­dent Nay­ib Bukele, once di­a­met­ri­cal­ly op­posed to Venezuela’s gov­ern­ment, wrote in a post on X.

Earth­quakes im­pact the re­gion

Build­ings in Man­aus, Belem and Maca­pa in Brazil’s Ama­zon were evac­u­at­ed, ac­cord­ing to re­ports on TV Globo. The quakes al­so were felt in Colom­bia’s Caribbean and north­east re­gions.

The U.S. Pa­cif­ic Tsuna­mi Warn­ing Cen­ter is­sued sev­er­al tsuna­mi alerts that were quick­ly lift­ed.

While un­com­mon in Venezuela, earth­quakes are fre­quent along the Pa­cif­ic coast, in­clud­ing in Mex­i­co and Chile, which both sit along the seis­mi­cal­ly ac­tive tec­ton­ic belt known as the Ring of Fire, an area that the US­GS says is re­spon­si­ble for 90% of earth­quakes. —CARA­CAS, Venezuela (AP)

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Sto­ry by REGI­NA GAR­CIA CANO and JUAN PABLO AR­RAEZ | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Gar­cia Cano re­port­ed from Bo­go­ta, Colom­bia. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Clara Preve in Buenos Aires, Astrid Suarez in Bo­go­ta, Colom­bia, Mauri­cio Savarese in Sao Paulo and An­na-Cather­ine Brigi­da, Megan Janet­sky and In­dia Grant in Mex­i­co City, Cristi­na Fuentes in Madrid and Maria Tere­sa Her­nan­dez in Bei­jing con­tributed to this re­port.