Venezuela quake death toll more than doubles to 589

The earthquake-related death toll in Venezuela has risen to 589, more than doubling from the previous count, and the number of injured is now 2,980, said Acting President Delcy Rodríguez on Friday afternoon.

On Thursday night, the official death toll was 235, with 4,300 injured.

She said there have been 214 aftershocks so far since the twin earthquakes struck on Wednesday evening. “This demonstrates and reflects the seismic activity in our territory.”
She also said the state of La Guaira will be “militarised” to help the emergency response.

La Guaira is one of the areas worst affected by the twin earthquakes, which were measured at 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude and were the strongest to hit the country in more than a century.

More than 100 buildings in the La Guaira state have collapsed, and at least 70,000 families have been affected, said Venezuela’s Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello.

La Guaira is an economically important region as it is home to one of the country’s two main seaports and the main international airport, which has been closed due to damage.

Nearly 600 people have been reported dead and 3,000 others are wounded, according to Venezuela’s Health Minister Carlos Alvarado. Hundreds more ⁠are believed to be trapped under rubble.

The hospitals are “full of patients,” Carlos Alvarado added.

International rescue teams have joined an urgent search for survivors in Venezuela, where people remain trapped under collapsed buildings after two devastating earthquakes on Wednesday.

Countries from across the Americas – including Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Colombia, El Salvador, Cuba and the United States – as well as the United Nations, continued on Friday to send search and rescue teams and humanitarian aid in the aftermath of the quakes.

In La Guaira city, volunteers dug through wreckage with their bare hands as families waited for news of missing relatives.

Along the Caracas-La Guaira highway, streams of civilians headed towards the coast carrying water, food and medicine, stepping in as the scale of the disaster overwhelmed initial rescue efforts.

“We lost everything. We have no food or medicines … We hope help arrives quickly,” said Pedro Perez, 64, an upholstery workshop owner who said he had lost both his home and business and was sleeping on the street with his wife and children.

Scenes of panic and destruction also played out in Caracas, where many spent the night sleeping on the streets or in their cars due to fear of more buildings collapsing.

“People are afraid to go back into their houses,” journalist Maria Emilia Miro Quesada told Al Jazeera from Caracas. “They are very uncertain … about the structures, the damages.”

Venezuela’s recovery from the disaster is being hampered by years of economic collapse and strained infrastructure.

“Venezuela was already in a very difficult situation” before the quakes, with frequent power outages and public services in “shambles”, said Al Jazeera’s Alessandro Rampietti, reporting from Bogota in neighbouring Colombia.

On Friday afternoon, BBC chatted with several people in Venezuela who have missing relatives in La Guaira.

They know the buildings where their relatives lived have collapsed, and despite their best efforts, they cannot get any information. Phones are going unanswered. And official information for them feels virtually non-existent.

One of them told BBC that she finally found her aunt, who had left her apartment to walk her dog minutes before it collapsed. Both her aunt and the pet have lost their home, but they are unharmed.

Another person – who lives in Europe – said Thursday they had two close relatives trapped in the rubble in a neighbourhood also close to the coast.

They were trying to do what they could from miles away, and across a five-hour time difference. People in the area told them they heard voices from the rubble. They thought it was one of their relatives.

This morning I woke up to her message confirming that both of her relatives were found, but they did not survive.