A week after two powerful earthquakes tore through Venezuela, the scale of the catastrophe is still coming into focus, and the death toll is climbing. The two quakes, which struck on 24 June with preliminary magnitudes of 7.2 and 7.5, appear to have been the strongest ever recorded in the country, and the coastal region of La Guaira, closest to the epicentre, was left all but unrecognisable.
The official provisional toll has risen above 1,700 dead, but authorities and aid workers have made clear that figure is almost certainly a significant undercount. Officials have pointed to at least 1,000 additional deaths recorded since the middle of last week alone, and warned that the number of people who died in their homes is far higher than what has so far been formally counted.
The physical destruction has been immense. According to a preliminary analysis of satellite data by the United States space agency NASA, more than 58,000 buildings were destroyed or damaged by the tremors. Tens of thousands of people are still listed as missing, and a week on, hope of pulling more survivors from the rubble has been steadily fading as the search drags into its second week.
The disaster has overwhelmed a health system in a country whose economy was already drained long before the ground shook. At the entrance to hospitals, patients have been left waiting for hours, with corridors more crowded than usual as medical staff struggle to keep pace. The economic bill, layered on top of years of hardship, is expected to be staggering.
International help has poured in to support the response. The United States military has repaired the port in the badly hit La Guaira region and helped set up a provisional morgue, restoring a vital lifeline for bringing in aid. Germany's federal disaster relief agency, the Technisches Hilfswerk, deployed rescue specialists with search dogs and equipment, flown in aboard German military transport aircraft.
For Venezuelans, the twin earthquakes have compounded an already desperate situation, turning whole districts into fields of rubble and leaving families to search for the missing and bury their dead. As crews from around the world continue to dig through the debris in La Guaira and beyond, the focus has shifted from rescue toward recovery, even as officials caution that the true human cost of the disaster is still far from known.