Venezuela Earthquakes’ Death Toll Climbs To 1,450

CARACAS, June 28 (Reuters) – Rescue teams raced on Sunday to find survivors of two powerful earthquakes that hit Venezuela this week. Signs of life provided occasional relief in narrowing down the grim list of tens of thousands of casualties.

The death toll from Wednesday’s twin earthquakes rose to at least 1,450 as of Saturday, as foreign rescue teams rushed to La Guaira, the hardest-hit province of a country already mired in a deep political and economic crisis.

Dozens of buildings collapsed into piles of sand and rubble in the coastal state about 40 kilometers north of Caracas.

Interim President Delcy Rodriguez said, “We must report that the death toll, including men and women, has reached 1,450 people as a result of the most brutal natural disaster our country has experienced in its history.”

It said approximately 3,150 people were injured, 12,721 people were displaced and 774 buildings collapsed.

The government, which Rodríguez has headed since his predecessor was ousted by the United States in a raid in January, thanked civilian volunteers carrying aid to La Guaira, but later tightened access to the road, saying traffic was preventing emergency vehicles from moving effectively.

Later Sunday, National Assembly Speaker Jorge Rodríguez, brother of the interim president, said rescue teams remained active trying to find survivors before it was too late.

“Every life saved is a miracle; every life saved is a response to the efforts of thousands of people for whom we will be forever grateful,” he said in a televised speech.

We are in critical hours to continue saving lives and to establish camps where people who have lost their homes or cannot return home for any reason can stay.

Families and volunteers spent days pulling survivors and bodies from the rubble before the arrival of more than 2,600 foreign rescue workers; They often complained of inadequate heavy equipment and limited official presence, as hundreds of aftershocks deepened the damage and unsettled residents.

The government said at least 33 people, including several children, had been rescued so far this weekend on Saturday evening, while tens of thousands of people remained missing.

Although the government has given a figure of hundreds of missing or stranded people, on Sunday a website backed by the country’s political opposition listed just under 50,000 unnamed people; this number was a slight decrease from the previous day’s 55,000 people.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that more than 10,000 deaths are possible from magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 earthquakes, placing them among Latin America’s deadliest earthquakes of the last century.

Time is ticking to save the people still living under the rubble.

“There is a window of about three days, that is, 72 hours, and then your chances of saving people alive decrease,” said Sebastian Eugster, leader of the Swiss rescue team.

He added that the 80-person team found multiple people alive under the rubble, thanks to warnings from eight search dogs, but they were not able to get them out in time to save them.

On Saturday evening, 72 hours had passed since the earthquakes.

The U.S. State Department on Saturday welcomed the rescue of a baby by U.S. rescuers, releasing video on X showing helmeted rescuers pulling the blanket-wrapped and crying child from the rubble.

A Colombian rescue team also rescued an 11-year-old boy named Moises, who was trapped under debris at a depth of about 3 meters (10 feet), after locating him with a scanner, Reuters TV reported.

He was lifted up on a stretcher with a broken arm, and his eyes were covered with cloth to protect from the shock of daylight. His mother and sister were killed.

Mexican rescue crews working at a collapsed building in the town of Caraballeda rescued another 11-year-old boy, Rodriguez posted on X late Saturday, showing crews carrying a small figure on a stretcher from the rubble.

Pope Leo told worshipers gathered for the Angelus prayer in Rome on Sunday that he “wanted to express my closeness to my Venezuelan sisters and brothers affected by the recent earthquakes” and expressed his gratitude to rescue workers.

A financing package worth hundreds of millions of dollars, on top of the $150 million the Trump administration has already committed, is expected to be announced within the next day, a senior U.S. official said Saturday.

The disaster could have political ramifications for Rodriguez, who describes himself as an agent of change despite serving as vice president under his predecessor Nicolas Maduro.

(Reporting by Vivian Sequera and Efrain Otero en La Guaira in Caracas; Diego Ore in Mexico City, Julia Symmes Cobb in Bogota, Francesca Landini in the Vatican, Akanksha Khushi in Bangalore; Writing by Julia Symmes Cobb and Stefanie Eschenbacher; Editing by Bill Berkrot, Christian Plumb and Chris Reese)