44 Teams, 27 Countries: Venezuela's Twin Earthquakes and the Race to Pull People From the Rubble

At 18:04 local time on 24 June 2026, a magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck approximately 160 kilometres northwest of Caracas, in the coastal mountain zone that separates Venezuela's capital from the Caribbean Sea. Thirty-nine seconds later, a second earthquake — magnitude 7.5 — hit nearly the same fault line. The two events, separated by less than a minute, together constituted the most powerful seismic sequence to affect Venezuela in more than a century. Within hours, the scale of what had happened in La Guaira State — the coastal strip that contains Venezuela's main international airport and serves as the port gateway for Caracas — became undeniable. Buildings had collapsed. The airport was closed. Metro and rail services had been suspended. Power outages were spreading across Carabobo, Aragua, and parts of the capital itself. And beneath the rubble, people were still alive.

By 27 June, Venezuela's civil protection authorities had confirmed at least 1,430 deaths and 3,238 injuries, with figures still rising as search operations continued. More than 3,100 families had been displaced. Preliminary satellite analysis by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), using the RAPIDA rapid digital assessment tool, estimated direct physical damage — to homes and economic assets — at approximately $6.7 billion, equivalent to around six per cent of Venezuela's gross domestic product. The range of losses, accounting for uncertainty in the assessment, stretched from $4.7 billion to $8.7 billion. Infrastructure damage and the long-term economic cost of disrupted activity were not included in that figure.

Some 8.6 million people were exposed to moderate to severe shaking. Of those, approximately 2.1 million experienced the strongest tremors. UNDP estimated that 1.7 million structures were located within the affected zone — an enormous density, reflecting the fact that the earthquake struck in the most urbanised corridor of a country of 29 million people.

The International Response: USAR at Scale

Venezuela's government requested international assistance within hours of the earthquakes. The response was immediate and large. Under the coordination framework of the United Nations' International Search and Rescue Advisory Group (INSARAG), and with OCHA activating its emergency response mechanisms on the ground, 44 international urban search and rescue (USAR) teams had deployed to Venezuela by 27 June. In total, 2,245 specialists and 140 search dogs were operating across the most heavily damaged zones, working to extract survivors from collapsed structures and provide immediate medical stabilisation before transfer to hospital.

The teams came from 27 countries: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Peru, and the Dominican Republic from the Americas; and Germany, Czechia, Spain, the United States, France, Italy, Jordan, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Qatar, the United Kingdom, Serbia, Syria, Switzerland, and Türkiye from outside the region. The geographic breadth of the deployment reflects both the severity of what happened in Venezuela and the extent to which the international USAR network — built and tested over decades in earthquakes from Haiti to Turkey — can now mobilise quickly when activation happens through recognised UN channels.

OCHA's role in that mobilisation was central. The agency coordinated the reception and deployment of arriving teams, managed information-sharing between national authorities and international responders, and maintained the operational picture across a disaster zone that was physically fragmented by road closures, power outages, and ongoing aftershock activity. By 27 June, OCHA had documented more than 302 aftershocks since the main events, a continuing hazard that complicated both rescue operations and the safety assessments that must precede them.

La Guaira: The Hardest Hit

La Guaira State absorbed the worst of the damage. Situated on a narrow coastal shelf between the sea and the steeply rising Avila mountain range, La Guaira has almost no room to spread. Buildings are densely packed, many of them older construction that predates modern seismic codes. The state contains Simón Bolívar International Airport — Venezuela's main point of international entry and exit — which was forced to close immediately after the earthquakes, cutting off an air corridor that would have been essential for the first hours of any emergency response. Overland routes between La Guaira and Caracas, which run through the mountains via a series of tunnels and high-altitude highway sections, sustained damage that slowed the movement of equipment and personnel in both directions.

UNDP's satellite assessment noted possible power outages in parts of Carabobo, La Guaira, Caracas, and Aragua, detected through a reduction in nighttime lighting following the earthquakes. Power availability is not an abstract concern in a disaster response — it affects the operation of hospitals, the charging of communication equipment, the functioning of water pumping infrastructure, and the ability of coordination centres to maintain situational awareness. In La Guaira, where infrastructure was already damaged and access was constrained, these outages compounded every aspect of the early response.

A Crisis Within a Crisis

To understand why the Venezuela earthquake is a particular kind of humanitarian challenge, it is necessary to hold two facts simultaneously: the earthquake is a sudden-onset disaster requiring immediate search and rescue; and Venezuela entered that earthquake from within a pre-existing humanitarian emergency that had already left nearly 8 million people inside the country in need of some form of humanitarian assistance.

Venezuela has experienced years of economic contraction, political instability, and the collapse of essential services. Public health infrastructure has been severely degraded. Nutrition rates, particularly among children, have remained elevated well above emergency thresholds. Many Venezuelans have been surviving on a combination of international assistance and remittances from the approximately 7.7 million who had emigrated by the time the earthquakes struck. The IRC — which has operated in Venezuela since 2021 and reached more than 75,000 people with humanitarian assistance in 2025 — described the situation plainly: the earthquakes "worsen the existing humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, which, combined with recent cuts to humanitarian aid, will make the response even more difficult."

That last phrase carries weight. Venezuela had already been seriously impacted by global aid funding cuts in the year preceding the earthquake. The reduction in available assistance had limited the capacity of humanitarian organisations operating in the country to maintain service levels, and had left the national systems — health, WASH, shelter — even more stretched than they would otherwise have been. Into that context, the earthquakes dropped a sudden additional mass of need: displaced families, overwhelmed hospitals, collapsed water infrastructure, and a population that had neither the savings nor the institutional safety net to absorb a shock of this magnitude.

UNICEF estimated that approximately 680,000 children were in immediate need of humanitarian assistance following the earthquakes. The agency's Humanitarian Situation Report No. 1, issued on 25 June, flagged acute needs in child protection, nutrition, water and sanitation, and psychological support — all categories that were already under pressure before 24 June.

Funding the Response

The international financial response moved quickly, at least by the standards of disaster funding. The United States committed more than $150 million in assistance — including $50 million in bilateral awards to partners including World Vision, Samaritan's Purse, Catholic Relief Services, the International Organization for Migration, UNICEF, and the World Food Programme, and a $100 million contribution to the OCHA Venezuela pooled fund. The European Union mobilised €5 million in emergency assistance. Colombia, Chile, El Salvador, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic all dispatched personnel and material aid. El Salvador alone sent 300 rescuers and paramedics and arranged 50 metric tons of humanitarian aid.

The mobilisation of financial and human resources at this scale reflects the operation of systems that have been deliberately built and tested — INSARAG, the OCHA emergency response framework, bilateral government channels — precisely to enable rapid deployment when a sudden-onset disaster of this severity occurs. That infrastructure matters. Countries that have built it, and organisations that have invested in the relationships and protocols it requires, can put 2,245 people on the ground in four days. Countries and contexts that lack those connections cannot.

What Comes After the Rescue Phase

Urban search and rescue is, by definition, a time-limited activity. The survival probability of people trapped under rubble declines sharply after the first 72 hours, and most USAR operations move into recovery — rather than rescue — mode within a week of the initial event. By 28 June, rescuers were still finding survivors in the collapsed structures of La Guaira and Caracas — a sign both of the scale of the collapse and of the effectiveness of the search effort. But the transition from rescue to recovery and reconstruction is already approaching, and the needs it will produce are different in kind from those that USAR teams are equipped to address.

Displaced families will need temporary shelter and food security support for weeks to months. Damaged hospitals will need rapid rehabilitation to manage a trauma caseload that will continue to present long after the acute phase is over. Water and sanitation systems will need emergency repair to prevent the outbreak of waterborne disease in densely populated communities where sewage and water pipes have been ruptured. Children who have lost family members or homes will need psychosocial support. The IRC, UNICEF, WHO, and the broader humanitarian system will need sustained funding — not the emergency surge of the first days, but the less dramatic, harder-to-fundraise support for the medium-term phase that follows every major disaster and that determines, more than the rescue operation itself, how many people ultimately recover rather than simply survive.

Venezuela's political context adds a layer of complexity that does not apply in most disaster settings. The country has been operating under an interim government following the removal of President Nicolás Maduro. International actors working in Venezuela must navigate a political environment that has historically been complicated for external humanitarian operations — relationships between the government, international organisations, and the donor community that were already strained before 24 June have not become simpler in the aftermath of a catastrophic earthquake. How those relationships develop will significantly affect the scope and sustainability of the humanitarian response in the months ahead.