标签： South America

On Wednesday, a rare and powerful double earthquake event, formally called an earthquake doublet, devastated northern Venezuela, leaving at least 188 people confirmed dead, more than 200 trapped under rubble, and over 1,500 injured. Thousands more are currently unaccounted for, with rescue officials warning that the death toll is almost certain to rise as search operations continue through collapsed infrastructure. One of the hardest-hit areas is La Guaira, a coastal region located just north of the capital city Caracas, where dozens of buildings have been completely leveled.

According to data from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the two major seismic events struck just 39 seconds apart along the San Sebastian fault on Venezuela’s northern Caribbean coastline. The first, a 7.2-magnitude foreshock, originated 22 kilometers (14 miles) deep, 170 kilometers (105 miles) west of Caracas near the coastal town of Morón. Barely half a minute later, a stronger 7.5-magnitude mainshock hit 10 kilometers (6 miles) deep, just 16 kilometers (10 miles) southwest of Morón. USGS experts confirmed that the back-to-back quakes, classified as a doublet due to their similar magnitude, close timing and proximity, resulted from shallow strike-slip faulting along the complex tectonic boundary between the Caribbean and South American plates. The event ranks among the most powerful seismic activity recorded in Venezuela in more than a century.

Acting President Delcy Rodríguez has declared La Guaira, which sits around 165 kilometers (103 miles) east of the mainshock’s epicenter, a full disaster zone. Authorities have deployed all available rescue resources from across the country to the region, where civilian volunteers and first responders have worked around the clock to pull survivors from crumbled concrete. Footage from the scene shows survivors covered in dust and blood emerging from rubble, while distraught families grieve outside flattened homes. Grief-stricken residents have posted hundreds of missing-person flyers with photos of lost loved ones, and shared handwritten lists of unaccounted-for names across social media and community boards in a frantic search for information.

Widespread damage extends far beyond La Guaira, reaching all the way into the capital Caracas and triggering evacuations as far away as Brazil’s Amazon region, more than 1,700 kilometers (1,050 miles) from the epicenter. In downtown Caracas, hundreds of residents spent the first night after the quake huddled in open public spaces including parks and parking lots, terrified to return to damaged, unstable structures for fear of aftershocks. Large swathes of the capital lost power and cellular connectivity immediately after the quake. Caracas’ main international airport sustained significant structural damage and has been closed to all traffic, subway operations across the city have been suspended, and natural gas service has been shut off as a safety precaution. Local officials have canceled classes at all schools for several days, repurposing the facilities as emergency public shelters and donation collection centers. In response to the disaster, Rodríguez announced the government has established a $200 million reconstruction fund to repair damaged hospitals and residential buildings.

The disaster comes as Venezuela faces already severe political and economic challenges, adding an unprecedented new crisis to Rodríguez’ tenure. Rodríguez, a former vice president, assumed office in January after former President Nicolás Maduro was captured by U.S. authorities. Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores are currently jailed in New York City awaiting trial on drug trafficking charges. Rodríguez inherited a nation that has struggled with crippling economic turmoil for more than a decade, and her government already faces deep political division: large segments of the Venezuelan population reject the legitimacy of her ruling movement, even as some of her former loyalists have criticized her leadership and recent diplomatic warming toward the U.S.

International support has already begun mobilizing to assist Venezuela’s response to the disaster. The U.S. government announced Thursday it would deploy two specialized urban search and rescue teams to the country, alongside $150 million in humanitarian aid distributed through independent nongovernmental organizations and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The United Nations confirmed that international search and rescue teams are expected to begin arriving in the country within hours of the announcement. Additional aid pledges have come from Qatar and Mexico, among other nations. Meanwhile, the large Venezuelan diaspora in the U.S. — which counts more than 770,000 people, with large concentrated communities in Florida, Texas and Utah — has moved quickly to organize grassroots donation drives to support disaster survivors.

A string of significant seismic events stretching across three continents has put modern earthquake early warning (EEW) systems in the spotlight, demonstrating how mobile technology is buying vulnerable populations critical extra seconds to reach safety when shaking begins.

Over a single week in early June, seismic activity triggered alerts for millions of people across North America, South America and Asia. The sequence opened with a moderate quake rocking parts of California, United States, and closed with two powerful back-to-back earthquakes measuring 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude striking northern Venezuela — one of the most intense seismic sequences to hit the South American nation in more than 100 years. The events came just weeks after a magnitude 6.5 quake near Mindanao in the Philippines claimed 37 lives. Even in nations without a national public EEW infrastructure, consumer mobile technology stepped in to deliver advance warnings to at-risk residents.

Today, more than a dozen nations and territories operate formal public EEW programs, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), including the U.S., Mexico, Japan, Turkey, Romania, China, Italy and Taiwan. While Venezuela does not maintain a national system, many of its Android phone users still received advance warnings of the recent powerful quakes through Google’s crowdsourced Android Earthquake Alerts platform. For 39-year-old Caracas-based writer Pericles Sánchez, that advance notice meant enough time to get his entire family outside to safety before shaking reached his neighborhood. “It wasn’t until we were already outside that we started to feel it,” Sánchez said, adding his family’s home escaped structural damage.

On the U.S. West Coast, the USGS runs a dedicated EEW platform called ShakeAlert for California, Oregon and Washington, which distributes alerts through multiple channels including the state-run MyShake mobile app. When the recent moderate quake hit California, more than 4 million users received advance alerts through the interconnected system, according to USGS scientist Robert de Groot.

Though modern EEW technology is saving lives today, it remains a relatively new innovation that continues to evolve rapidly. The world’s first public EEW launched in Mexico in 1991, and the country now disseminates large quake alerts through broadcast networks, mobile apps and public alarm systems, alongside regular nationwide earthquake response drills to prepare residents. After the 2011 magnitude 9.0 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami that killed more than 22,000 people and triggered the catastrophic Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown, Japan dramatically expanded its EEW infrastructure to include offshore monitoring. Its cutting-edge Seafloor Observation Network for Earthquakes and Tsunamis (S-Net) uses thousands of miles of undersea cables and sensors to monitor activity along the offshore subduction zone where destructive quakes often originate. The system, widely regarded as the most sophisticated in the world, has added an extra 20 seconds of warning time for most quakes and cut tsunami alert delivery times by as much as 20 minutes. California’s MyShake app, launched in 2019, has pushed out 6.8 million alerts for 194 separate seismic events to date, state data shows.

All EEW systems operate on the same core scientific principle: earthquakes generate sequential waves that move at different speeds. Faster, lower-intensity P-waves arrive first, followed by far more dangerous, slower S-waves and finally the most destructive L-waves. Most traditional public systems use a network of ground-based seismometers to detect initial P-waves, rapidly process data to estimate the quake’s location and magnitude, and push alerts to at-risk regions before destructive shaking arrives. Alerts are distributed through multiple channels, including national Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) systems, dedicated mobile apps and regional public warning networks. Having overlapping distribution channels creates critical redundancy in case one system fails, de Groot explained. “It’s always good to have more than one way of getting alerts. It’s the reason why you carry a spare tire in your car or carry some small bills in your wallet because the ATM may not work,” he said.

Google’s Android system uses a different crowdsourced model that leverages built-in accelerometer sensors already included in every Android device — the same sensors that rotate a phone’s screen when the device is turned. When multiple stationary phones in one region detect P-wave activity, the data is sent to Google’s central processing center, which confirms the seismic event and pushes alerts to nearby users. This model allows EEW coverage to extend to nations that lack the funding or infrastructure to build a traditional national seismometer network.

Because alert signals travel at the speed of light — far faster than seismic waves move through the Earth’s crust — warning time correlates directly with distance from the quake’s epicenter. People closest to the epicenter typically get the shortest warning windows, sometimes only a few seconds or no warning at all before shaking begins, while people further away get more preparation time, almost always less than a minute. The level of detail included in alerts also varies by distribution channel: standard WEAs are limited to 90 characters broadcast directly from cell towers, while app-based alerts from platforms like MyShake or Google often include extra context such as the distance to the epicenter and estimated magnitude. All official alerts, regardless of format, include the universal safety instruction to “drop, cover, hold on.”

This reporting was compiled from contributions by journalists across the U.S. and Mexico, with on-the-ground sourcing from Venezuela and California.

In the wake of two catastrophic back-to-back earthquakes that left at least 188 people dead and hundreds more injured across Venezuela, the large Venezuelan diaspora community across the United States has mobilized at speed to organize urgent donation drives to support relief efforts on the ground.

The 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude tremors, which struck Wednesday evening, rank among the most powerful seismic events to hit Venezuela in over 100 years. The quakes inflicted severe structural damage to Simon Bolivar International Airport, Venezuela’s primary air gateway located in the capital Caracas, a critical blow that threatens to slow the delivery of life-saving humanitarian aid to affected regions. Graphic imagery from the disaster zone shows dust-covered, bleeding injured civilians, children and animals being pulled from collapsed concrete rubble, while thousands of people remain unaccounted for — leaving relatives living in the U.S. desperate for updates on their loved ones.

More than 770,000 Venezuelan-born people currently reside in the United States, with the largest concentration settled in Doral, a suburban city just outside Miami, Florida. Oscar Torres, a 28-year U.S. resident and sales manager based in Doral, has spent nearly a full day glued to a dedicated WhatsApp group connecting Venezuelan residents with their relatives abroad, tracking updates and coordinating donations.

“Already this morning, I was looking at the Doral group and everybody’s pitching in — money, medicine, water. First, necessity items,” Torres explained. “They’re talking about making the first shipment as soon as possible.” Torres still has extended family living in Caracas and the hard-hit city of Valencia, where a number of his relatives suffered minor injuries while fleeing damaged buildings. “Their homes are destroyed and a few buildings have collapsed,” he said. “Thankfully, I don’t know anyone who passed away.” Local Doral officials and Venezuelan advocacy organizations have amplified calls for donations across social media and official press conferences, with Torres planning to contribute cash to the relief effort.

Beyond Florida, other large Venezuelan communities in Texas have also sprung into action. In the Houston metropolitan area, where the western suburb of Katy has earned the nickname “Katyzuela” for its massive Venezuelan population, residents have leveraged Facebook groups and other social platforms to advertise local drop-off points for donations. The most urgent needs identified include first aid and medical supplies: gauze, bandages, antiseptic solutions, disposable gloves, face masks, syringes, thermometers and blood pressure monitors are all high priority for aid shipments.

Daniel Arenas, a maritime industry consultant who relocated to Houston from Venezuela a decade ago, translated a Spanish donation call to English and shared it to his LinkedIn profile Thursday, urging a broader cross-section of the Houston community to contribute. “I came to this country ten years ago, built a life here, but my heart is still in Venezuela,” Arenas said. “It’s devastating what’s happening over there. They don’t have the resources to handle this.”

Arenas shared that his wife spent hours anxiously waiting for news after her aunt, a Caracas high-rise resident, sent a panicked voice note moments after the quakes hit. “She was crying and screaming and saying she was in pain but not sure from where,” Arenas recounted. “She said she lost everything. She was desperate.” The family was later able to re-establish contact with her aunt, bringing an end to the hours-long period of uncertainty.

The outpouring of organizing across U.S. Venezuelan communities comes as Venezuelan authorities assess the full scale of the disaster, with relief operations already facing logistical hurdles from damaged infrastructure.

Two rare consecutive deadly earthquakes rocked Venezuela this Wednesday, leaving hundreds dead and injured across the affected region. The destructive doublet quake has drawn renewed attention to the severe seismic risk that has shaped the history of the Americas, prompting a retrospective look at the deadliest seismic events recorded across Central and South America over the past 100 years.

In September 2017, Mexico faced an unprecedented seismic disaster when an 8.1 magnitude quake and a 7.1 magnitude aftershock struck within seven days, laying waste to large swathes of southern and central Mexico, including the capital Mexico City. The event claimed the lives of nearly 500 people and left thousands more displaced.

Just one year earlier, on April 16, 2016, a 7.8 magnitude tremor hit Ecuador’s coastal provinces, leveling entire towns and killing more than 650 residents. In February 2010, central Chile was shaken by an 8.8 magnitude earthquake that shook the capital city for 90 straight seconds before triggering a devastating tsunami. The disaster resulted in 523 fatalities. Three years prior, in August 2007, an 8.0 magnitude quake off Peru’s central coast killed more than 500 people.

One of the deadliest events in recent regional history unfolded in El Salvador across the first two months of 2001. A 7.7 magnitude offshore quake on January 13 was followed just a month later by a 6.6 magnitude aftershock. Combined with massive landslides triggered by the seismic activity, the back-to-back events killed more than 1,200 people. In January 1999, a 6.0 magnitude quake destroyed the Colombian city of Armenia, leaving roughly 1,170 people dead.

In April 1991, a 7.4 magnitude quake killed more than 80 people across Costa Rica and neighboring Panama, leaving an estimated 30,000 residents cut off from critical food, clean water, and emergency medical supplies for days. In September 1985, an 8.1 magnitude quake hit central Mexico, killing an estimated 12,000 people; the true death toll has never been confirmed due to widespread reporting gaps in the aftermath of the disaster.

Going further back, in February 1976, a 7.5 magnitude quake hit western Guatemala, killing more than 22,700 people. Four years earlier, in December 1972, a 6.2 magnitude quake struck Nicaragua, killing a minimum of 6,000 people, with unofficial estimates placing the death toll as high as 9,000. In May 1970, a 7.9 magnitude quake hit northern Peru, killing more than 66,000 people, making it one of the deadliest seismic events in the region’s modern history.

The 1960 Great Chilean Earthquake, also known as the Valdivia Earthquake, remains the most powerful quake ever recorded in human history, registering a magnitude of 9.5. The disaster killed more than 1,655 people, many of whom lost their lives to the massive tsunami it triggered, and left more than 2 million people homeless. Nearly a decade earlier, in August 1949, a 6.8 magnitude quake in Ecuador killed roughly 5,050 people.

In January 1939, an 8.3 magnitude quake hit the Chilean city of Chillan, killing approximately 28,000 people, with some estimates putting the death toll near 30,000. At the start of the 20th century, in January 1906, an 8.8 magnitude quake struck near Ecuador’s Esmeraldas, an event dubbed the Ecuador-Colombia earthquake. It generated a massive tsunami that killed roughly 1,500 people and traveled all the way north to the coast of San Francisco, California.

On a devastating Wednesday evening, Venezuela was hit by two back-to-back powerful earthquakes measuring magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5, marking one of the strongest seismic events to strike the South American nation in over a century. The tremors were felt across the entire surrounding region, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake: official casualty reports confirm at least 164 people have been killed, more than 1,000 others have sustained injuries, and dozens more remain trapped beneath the rubble of collapsed buildings as of Thursday. By Thursday morning, Venezuelan emergency response teams were racing against the clock, leveraging every minute of daylight to accelerate search and rescue operations for survivors still buried under destroyed infrastructure. In the hours following the disaster, world leaders and senior officials from across the globe issued statements of solidarity and committed tangible support to Venezuela’s relief and recovery efforts.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio shared the nation’s condolences via the social platform X, saying, “The United States extends our deepest condolences to the people of Venezuela following the devastating earthquakes.” Rubio confirmed that the U.S. was launching an immediate emergency response, noting “the United States is ‘immediately deploying search and rescue teams, medical resources, and humanitarian assistance to Venezuela.’” He extended sympathies to all grieving families, injured victims, and praised the on-the-ground rescue crews working around the clock to find survivors.

French President Emmanuel Macron also issued a statement via X, affirming France’s unwavering solidarity with the Venezuelan people. Macron confirmed that a specialized team of 85 search and clearance rescue workers would be deployed to the disaster zone without delay, adding, “France stands ready, alongside its European partners, to provide assistance to the affected populations in response to the needs identified by the Venezuelan authorities.”

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva reaffirmed his country’s commitment to supporting Venezuela through the recovery process. Lula announced he had directed Brazil’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to launch an immediate assessment of on-the-ground conditions to determine what forms of aid Brazil can contribute. “I reaffirm our determination to support the government of Acting President Delcy Rodríguez in the recovery of affected areas in this sister nation, whose people have demonstrated great resilience in the face of adversity,” he wrote on X.

At a Thursday press conference, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun extended sincere condolences to the Venezuelan government and all communities impacted by the quakes. “China is willing to provide assistance to Venezuela to the best of its ability, according to Venezuela’s needs,” Guo stated, confirming China’s readiness to contribute to relief efforts upon request.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez shared his message of support via Instagram, writing, “All the support from me and Spain to the Venezuelan people after the devastating earthquakes of last night. Our thoughts are with the victims and their families.”

Colombia’s President-elect Abelardo de la Espriella also voiced his full solidarity with the Venezuelan people via X. “I stand in full solidarity with the brotherly people of Venezuela following the devastating earthquake. Colombia stands with you during this difficult time with affection, respect, and hope. My prayers are with the victims and their families. God will provide,” he wrote.

Venezuela is reeling from a devastating pair of powerful earthquakes that struck Wednesday, adding a new layer of catastrophe to a nation already grappling with political chaos and years of systemic decline. As death tolls continue to climb in the wake of the tremors, the disaster has laid bare both the enduring challenges and subtle shifts in the South American country just five months after a dramatic US military operation removed long-ruling leader Nicolás Maduro from power. Maduro, the left-wing leader who governed Venezuela from 2013 until January 2026, was captured in a dawn raid on his Caracas presidential compound and extradited to New York to face trial on international drug trafficking charges.

In the aftermath of Maduro’s removal, his close ally and former vice-president Delcy Rodríguez stepped into the role of interim president — a move that frustrated opposition supporters, who had expected the Trump administration to install opposition leader María Corina Machado at the helm of the transitional government. Now, Rodríguez’s response to the twin earthquakes is offering a clear snapshot of what has, and what has not, changed in Venezuela, as the country confronts the severe vulnerabilities of its long-decrepit infrastructure.

More than two hours after the quakes hit, Rodríguez delivered a national address on the state-owned television network VTV. In the gap between the disaster and her public address, official updates were extremely limited. While broken communication lines in the hardest-hit regions explain part of this delay, the information vacuum also traces back to media restrictions enacted under Maduro’s tenure. The former government shut down hundreds of independent local radio stations and online news outlets that would typically serve as critical sources of on-the-ground updates for affected communities during a crisis.

Rodríguez spoke alongside two of her closest allies: her brother Jorge Rodríguez, president of the National Assembly, who swore her into office days after Maduro’s capture, and Diosdado Cabello, Venezuela’s interior minister and a steadfast Maduro loyalist. In a notable break from his public appearances in the months leading up to the US intervention, Cabello did not wear his customary military fatigues, instead standing silently beside the interim president alongside Jorge Rodríguez. Visibly shaken by the disaster, Rodríguez opened her address with a urgent call for national unity, appealing to a population that has remained deeply polarized for more than a decade between supporters of Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chávez, and opposition factions.

She also declared a national state of emergency and appointed General Juan Ernesto Sulbarán, commander of Venezuela’s National Guard, to lead the country’s disaster response efforts. This appointment reflects a long-standing pattern of Venezuelan politics: throughout the 25 years that Chávez and Maduro held power, top government positions were almost exclusively filled by high-ranking military officers. For years, most key state ministries were led by generals, and analysts widely attribute the country’s crumbling infrastructure to the lack of specialized expertise among these military appointees.

Under pressure from the Trump administration, Rodríguez has recently made small moves to diversify her cabinet: she replaced the general leading the housing ministry with a civilian architect, and swapped the military head of the electricity ministry for a professional electrical engineer. Even with these incremental changes, decades of mismanagement, compounded by crippling US economic sanctions, have left most public infrastructure — particularly public housing — in severe disrepair. For example, the state-owned cement industry collapsed after its nationalization under Chávez, creating a nationwide shortage of building materials that has left critical structural repairs undone for years. This has left millions of buildings far more vulnerable to collapse during seismic events like this week’s quakes.

Venezuela’s emergency response services have also suffered from chronic underinvestment, a side effect of the military’s outsized influence over national spending. For decades, funding and equipment were prioritized for the armed forces, leaving civil protection and rescue agencies without modern tools, rescue vehicles, and sufficient resources to respond to large-scale disasters. Recognizing these deep shortcomings, Rodríguez publicly thanked foreign governments that have already pledged support to Venezuela’s relief effort — and in a striking break from Maduro’s policy, she explicitly highlighted aid offers from ideologically opposed leaders, including US President Donald Trump. She told the nation that the Trump administration had maintained constant communication with Venezuelan authorities to offer support and solidarity. She also thanked the right-wing presidents of the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, and Chile for their offers of assistance.

Maduro consistently restricted foreign aid to assistance from ideological allies, so Rodríguez’s willingness to accept help from across the political divide marks a clear shift in policy. For Venezuelans waking to widespread destruction, and for the dozens of families still waiting for news of loved ones trapped under collapsed rubble, this open approach to international aid offers a faint glimmer of hope amid overwhelming tragedy and ongoing national uncertainty. “The solidarity between our people is an invaluable source of strength in moments like these,” Rodríguez said in her address.

A catastrophic seismic event has left Venezuela reeling from widespread destruction, after two powerful earthquakes hit just seconds apart in the country’s northern region, claiming at least 164 lives and leaving hundreds of people injured.

According to data from the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the first tremor, registering a magnitude of 7.2, struck at 18:04 local time (22:04 GMT) on June 25, 2026, centered just 23 kilometers southeast of Yumare, a small town located west of the Venezuelan capital Caracas. Barely 38 seconds later, a second, stronger 7.5-magnitude quake hit the same general area, amplifying the destructive force across the region.

Seismologists explain that a quake’s destructive power depends on more than just its magnitude. Depth of the epicenter, local population density, and regional building quality all play critical roles in determining damage severity. The first earthquake was recorded at a depth of 20.3 kilometers below the Earth’s surface, while the second was far shallower at just 10 kilometers deep – a factor that greatly increases the intensity of shaking and resulting damage to surface infrastructure. Following the event, the USGS issued a risk assessment estimating a 44% probability that the final death toll could exceed 10,000, as rescue teams continue to clear rubble and reach remote affected areas.

Geographically, Venezuela sits along the highly active tectonic boundary where the Caribbean Plate and South American Plate slide past one another. The USGS notes that the twin quakes were almost certainly triggered by the sudden release of accumulated tectonic friction along this boundary, a common geologic driver of major seismic events in the region.

Widespread damage has been reported across multiple states. The strongest shaking from the second quake damaged or destroyed countless structures in Caracas and the nearby coastal town of La Guaira. Venezuela’s Interior Ministry confirmed that five additional states – Trujillo, Yaracuy, Carabobo, Aragua and Miranda – have also sustained serious impacts.

Footage verified by the BBC shows one of the most dramatic examples of destruction: a 10-story hotel in La Guaira that has been completely reduced to rubble. Only the building’s entrance remains standing, with the collapsed remains of the rest of the structure piled high around and above it. Shockingly captured video from inside Caracas’ main international airport, located on the capital’s outskirts, shows clouds of dust and chunks of debris raining down from terminal ceilings amid the shaking. Interim President Delcy Rodríguez announced that the country’s primary international air hub has been indefinitely closed due to the severe structural damage it sustained.

As emergency response teams begin to deploy across the affected regions, authorities are still working to compile full casualty and damage reports, with the confirmed death toll expected to rise in the coming days.