Venezuela declared a state of emergency Wednesday night as rescue teams picked through the rubble of collapsed buildings across Caracas, with authorities confirming fatalities after two powerful earthquakes — magnitudes 7.1 and 7.5 — struck the country’s northern coast 40 seconds apart.
Read: Venezuela’s Strongest Earthquakes in a Century Collapse Buildings Across Caracas
Rodriguez confirmed the death toll in a statement reported by the Associated Press, putting the count at a minimum of 32 killed and 700 injured as of Wednesday night.
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At the local level, Baruta mayor Darwin González reported at least three deaths from two building collapses in the Las Minas neighborhood. Officials identified four collapsed structures across the capital — two in San Bernardino, one in Pinto Salinas, and one in El Paraíso — and confirmed the states of La Guaira and Falcón sustained significant destruction beyond Caracas.
More than 20 aftershocks have followed the initial strikes.
Rodriguez rolled out a broad set of emergency measures. She shuttered Simón Bolívar International Airport citing severe infrastructure damage, suspended classes nationwide for the remainder of the week, canceled rail services and non-essential activities, and directed the government to open schools as shelters and donation centers. Rodriguez also called all healthcare workers in the country to report immediately to hospitals.
The United States moved quickly to deploy. Trump said the US “stands ready, willing, and able to help” and directed all federal agencies to prepare to act. Under Secretary for Foreign Assistance Jeremy Lewin confirmed the State Department activated a disaster assistance team and task force, dispatching search and rescue teams and medical personnel to coordinate relief with Rodriguez’s government.
The Trump administration removed former President Nicolás Maduro in a military operation in January, after which Trump declared the US would “run” the country. Since then, the US has shifted from isolation to direct but conditional engagement with Rodriguez’s government — lifting sanctions, restoring diplomatic ties, and pushing Venezuela’s oil sector open to US companies — while using that economic leverage to steer Venezuelan policy. Wednesday’s disaster puts the depth of that commitment to a concrete test.
USGS’s PAGER system projects a death toll between 10,000 and 100,000, a range it assigns a 44% probability. The model synthesizes magnitude, depth, location, population density, historical seismicity, and local building stock — it does not confirm a toll. Confirmed deaths remain in the single digits as rescue operations continue across multiple affected areas.
Venezuela’s press restrictions severely limit independent verification of damage and casualty figures as they emerge. The country ranks 159th out of 180 on Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index, and authorities block more than 200 websites — including major international outlets, social media platforms, and circumvention tools like VPNs — making real-time reporting from inside the country difficult to confirm.
Venezuela sits at the boundary of the Caribbean Plate and the South American Plate, a seismically active zone. The 1812 earthquake along the same fault system killed an estimated 30,000 people in Mérida and Caracas, according to the USGS.
