The search for survivors continued in Venezuela on Monday, five days after powerful back-to-back earthquakes devastated the nation, as the critical window for rescues rapidly closed and attention shifted to the country’s humanitarian crisis that could persist for years.
Relief organizations say the first 72 hours after a natural disaster are the most crucial for rescue operations, though survival can be extended if people have access to food and water.
Five days after the twin quakes, questions loomed about whether the cash-strapped government will be able to coordinate the effort needed to care for thousands of people who have been left homeless.
The official death toll has surpassed 1,700 people, according to the government, which maintains tight control over news media.
In other developments, a 4.6 magnitude aftershock rattled through the disaster zone in the northern state of La Guaira.
Facing criticism that authorities have done too little, too slowly, government officials aggressively promoted their recovery and rescue efforts. Police and military officers on Monday handed out cans of tuna and crackers to hungry displaced people in La Guaira.
In a speech, Jorge Rodríguez, the leader of the Venezuelan National Assembly and brother of acting President Delcy Rodríguez, said electricity had been restored to 90 percent of the hardest-hit state of La Guaira. He said authorities were racing to evaluate damaged buildings that still posed a danger and had set up 15 temporary displacement camps.
Many Venezuelan news reports have avoided politically delicate questions related to the earthquake, such as the widespread collapse of buildings, sticking instead to safer stories about heroic rescues. Delcy Rodríguez, who came to power in January after U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration seized former President Nicolás Maduro, shared footage Monday of emergency workers lifting a man out of the ruins to applause after a 43-hour search effort.
“Each life saved is a victory for hope,” she wrote on X.
Such bright spots are rare at the quake’s epicenter, where families keep vigil at search sites.
“We have to stay strong, even without food, without sleep,” said Ana Rada, watching as civil defense workers looked for her brother. “Until I see the body, I still have hope.”
After what the government said were more than 600 aftershocks since Wednesday’s quakes, a moderate temblor on Monday struck 27 kilometers (17 miles) north of Caraballeda on Venezuela’s Caribbean coast and measured 4.6 magnitude, according to the United States Geological Survey.
Jorge Rodríguez said there were no reports of damage, but the shock sent residents in the capital of Caracas screaming into the streets.
“Here we are again, back in the street. I don’t know when we’ll have a moment of true peace,” said Concepción Hernández, 51, evacuating her apartment in the Chacao municipality of Caracas.
Dozens of countries have offered assistance. But the disaster has raised expectations for the Trump administration after its takeover of Venezuela’s oil industry earlier this year.
In a briefing with reporters, a senior State Department official said 300 first responders sent from the U.S. are working on the ground and two dozen C-17 military transport planes arrive every day with supplies. Financial support from the U.S. now exceeds $300 million.
The U.S. military is also assisting with repairs at the port in La Guaira to allow an influx of relief supplies by sea and manage air traffic after the quakes destroyed part of the control tower at Simón Bolívar International Airport in Caracas, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.
It seemed unlikely, however, that the Trump administration would grant temporary humanitarian protections to Venezuelans as previous administrations have done for people from disaster-stricken countries already in the U.S. Such action was taken after earthquakes in 2010 in Haiti and 2001 in El Salvador.
Venezuelans have been a major focus of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. More than 100 Venezuelans recently deported from the U.S. were being held at a hotel in the country when the quake hit, and many are now missing, survivors say.
Among the rescuers digging through the rubble Monday was 31-year-old miner Jean Sosa, who said he was deported from the U.S. in January over a missed immigration court hearing and returned to Caracas last month, dazed by an odyssey that began in shackles at an Arizona immigration detention center.
He had built a new life in New York City over the past four years, he said, working at a taco stand near Penn Station, before Department of Homeland Security officials detained him. They ultimately shuttled him between immigration detention centers across the U.S. before leaving him and a busload of other deportees in southern Mexico without his passport, phone or wallet. He then paid his way back to Venezuela.
Since arriving Wednesday in La Guaira, Sosa has scrambled to pull people from the rubble with his old mining pickaxe in the absence of national rescue teams.
“Many people could have been saved if there had been equipment and support from top authorities from the very beginning,” he told The Associated Press, wearing a helmet and a black T-shirt splotched with dust in the port city where he said he had already rescued 20 people alive.
Those rescues heartened him, he said, despite the lack of supplies. “We’re working without gloves, without equipment, borrowing supplies, improvising bandages and whatever else we can.”
Experts are struggling to assess the scope of damage, but they generally agree that the government’s figures are a vast undercount.
