Citizen-led efforts fill in gaps left by the state in the immediate aftermath of the two back-to-back Venezuelan earthquakes
Originally published on Global Voices
.jpg)
Venezuelan citizens search through building destruction in La Guaira, Venezuela on June 29, 2026. Photo via Wikimedia Commons/US Marine Corps, public domain.
At 6.04 p.m. local time on June 24, 2026, Venezuela experienced its biggest seismic event in a century: a 7.2 magnitude earthquake, followed 39 seconds later by a 7.5 one.
As of July 6, 3,342 deaths had been confirmed, with 16,740 wounded and more than 16,000 left homeless, according to the the country´s Information Ministry. The unofficial tally of people reported missing has reached 41,000, and at least 58,000 buildings suffered significant damage, as shown by satellite imagery released by NASA.
Though their epicenters were located 160 kilometers (just short of 100 miles) away, the “doublet quakes”’ (also experienced in Syria and Turkey in 2023) rattled the heart of the South American country. Caracas, the Venezuelan capital city, and neighboring La Guaira, a coastal state situated 40 minutes away from Caracas by car, next to the Caribbean Sea, bore the brunt of the impact. The country's main international airport and seaport are located in La Guaira, as are many residential and vacation homes. As of 2011, the most recent census completed to date, approximately five million people lived in the combined area.
Venezuela’s northern coast is close to colliding tectonic plates situated in the Caribbean Sea and the South American continent, respectively. The Caracas-La Guaira area has experienced its share of natural disasters, including another earthquake in 1967 and major floods in 1999. Despite this, scientists regard the current Venezuelan seismic infrastructure as practically nonexistent. This time around, though, Android phones alerted many Venezuelans right before the quakes struck.
June 24 was a public holiday in Venezuela, so schools and offices were closed. When the twin earthquakes hit, many people were waiting to watch FIFA World Cup matches or simply spending a calm day with their families. Now, many of them are involved in searching for their relatives or organizing widespread community-led relief efforts, joined by a huge wave of international volunteers. Damages will cost at least USD 6.7 billion (or six percent of Venezuela’s GDP), a preliminary estimate from the United Nations Development Programme.
The event has added to a severe, pre-existing humanitarian crisis, complete with — among other issues that remain unchanged after the January 2026 U.S. intervention — a failing healthcare system and ill-equipped emergency response teams. There has been growing criticism of the “slow” response of the Venezuelan interim government.
Acting President Delcy Rodríguez, who claims the delay is a manufactured narrative from propaganda laboratories, said on July 3, “We did not wait one day, two days or three days. We activated immediately.”
The Rodriguez-led administration has set controversial measures such as mandatory registration in a Caracas office for all disaster zone-bound volunteers, including first-aid personnel, and coverage restrictions for local and foreign press.
Citizens, the first respondents
Local survivors were the first ones to pick up hand tools like axes and even use their bare hands to search for their loved ones, as seen at fallen buildings in La Guaira and Caracas. Others incessantly used Tiktok, Instagram and newly unblocked X to find missing people or post urgent calls for rescue personnel or supplies.
Many kept working hard around collapsed buildings, well beyond what rescue experts call the 72-hour window to find survivors.
Professional search and rescue (SaR) work also continued, undertaken by Venezuelan teams and from June 25, in the most affected areas, by teams from 30 other countries, including Argentina, Chile, Italy, Jordan, Mexico, Qatar, Spain, and the United States. Successful rescue stories — such as the retrieval of Dayana Patiño and her 8-day old baby boy, Juan David, after 32 hours under the rubble — were widely celebrated across international social media.
According to July 3 numbers from the government, efforts from volunteers and SaR teams have resulted in the rescue of least 6,000 people — alive — from stricken areas.
However, at least one episode involving Venezuelan officials marred the efforts of SaR teams. Francisco Lermanda, working with Topos de Chile (a volunteer-led SaR group), denounced incessant requests for identification from local military in active rescue zones in La Guaira. “We have orders to check your documents, because you can be a spy for the Yankees, for the Chileans,” officials reportedly told Lermanda, a seasoned rescue worker.
Kinship beyond borders
After a disaster, technology connects people and acts as a catalyst for recovery. After confirming that his parents were okay in Los Teques, a city close to Caracas, Elías Haig, a Venezuelan contributor to Global Voices, residing in the United States for college studies, set out to do something for his home country.
“I thought, ‘They will need to find missing persons,‘” Haig told Global Voices via WhatsApp. “Setting up a centralized information center, under still ongoing web blockades by the government, was impossible. We were also going to see fakes.”
The student immediately got to work, producing an OSINT-based page with additional AI-based capabilities aimed at compiling confirmed reports about missing people. He took it down on June 25 and forwarded his reports to larger web-based sites, also developed independently.
Terremotovenezuela2026, developed by Global Voices contributor Elias Haig, compiled missing persons reports in the immediate aftermath of the Venezuelan earthquakes. Screenshot used with permission.
“I will do whatever adds value, not obstruct anything,” Haig added. He is currently undertaking fundraising efforts with the help of local friends. Other global initiatives, many from the eight million-strong Venezuelan diaspora, are channeling aid to trustworthy non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on the ground, voluntarily providing remote structural evaluation and medical and psychological aid to those affected.
“We must continue”
Volunteer-led collection and distribution points are a common sight across Caracas and other Venezuelan cities after the twin earthquakes. Photo by Estefanía Salazar, used with permission.
Multiple volunteer-led relief efforts can physically be seen across Venezuela, in the form of collection points, refuge camps and more.
Caritas, a renowned Catholic-affiliated global non-profit, is one of the leading distribution networks currently channeling aid across affected areas in Venezuela. Many citizens, including residents from outside the most affected areas, have come to the organization’s Caracas headquarters to deliver donations or sign up as volunteers for what experts estimate will be a long-term effort.
Outside the Caritas headquarters, a long line of trucks and small cars stood waiting to deliver donations. One of them was a group from El Tigre — a city located close to oil fields six hours away in eastern Venezuela, which did not suffer major damage.
“We must continue,” said José Rivero, the young driver who, in the space of three days, had voluntarily made three trips back and forth between El Tigre and Caracas, using his family’s truck to bring food, clothing and medicine collected by his church. His words echo the feeling of many in the disaster-stricken nation.