Venezuela quake death toll passes 4,000 as scale of recovery effort looms large

The death toll in Venezuela’s devastating twin earthquakes has topped 4,000, the government said on Friday.

At least 4,118 people were killed and 16,740 injured in the back-to-back quakes on 24 June that flattened entire districts in the coastal state of La Guaira, Venezuelan parliament chief Jorge Rodriguez wrote on Telegram. Thousands more are listed as missing.

A 7.5-magnitude quake – the biggest in Venezuela in over a century – struck 39 seconds after a 7.2-magnitude shock, flattening entire high-rise apartment blocks.

Although rescue teams have halted searches for survivors, family members continue to scour the ruins for their loved ones, in the hope of giving them a dignified burial.

On Friday, a 3.0-magnitude quake in central Caracas caused momentary panic and led to buildings being evacuated.

The scale of the recovery effort facing Venezuela, where state services have been severely degraded by a prolonged economic crisis, is huge.

The United Nations on Wednesday issued an urgent appeal for nearly $300m towards earthquake relief operations to assist 1.3 million people in urgent need of aid in the South American country where non-governmental organisations until recently were targets of government repression. Mobile kitchens and clinics as well as field hospitals now dot public spaces in the northern state of La Guaira, where most of the devastation occurred.

The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction has estimated direct physical damage to housing and infrastructure around $37bn.

Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, has called for the release of frozen assets held abroad to be used towards the recovery.

On Wednesday she said she asked King Charles III to release about 30 tons of Venezuelan gold frozen under UK sanctions.

Delcy Rodríguez has defended her country’s emergency response to the twin earthquakes, vowing the country would not descend into social unrest.

Many Venezuelans have expressed anger at what they see as the US-backed government’s inadequate response to the disaster before international teams arrived.

With Agence France-Presse and Associated Press