Two powerful earthquakes struck Venezuela’s northern coast late on Wednesday, killing at least 164 people, injuring nearly 1,000 and bringing down buildings in and around Caracas, as authorities declared a state of emergency and warned that the toll could rise.
By Thursday, it had. Rescue workers were still digging through collapsed homes and apartment blocks, hospitals were receiving the injured, and officials were trying to count the dead in a country where the full scale of a disaster is rarely known on the first night. In La Guaira, the coastal state near the capital, residents described buildings split open, streets filled with rubble, power cuts, water shortages and families refusing to go back indoors.
The destruction was driven by a rare seismic doublet, according to the US Geoalogical Survey: a 7.2-magnitude shock followed 39 seconds later by a stronger 7.5-magnitude quake. Venezuela sits in a seismic zone, and earthquakes of this force would test any state. But the difference between a frightening earthquake and a mass-casualty disaster is still hard to miss.
Venezuela’s tragedy is especially painful because this was once an oil-rich nation that had invested in building standards and disaster preparedness after earlier disasters. Years of economic turmoil have now tested its ability to respond to this earthquake. A country that should have had machinery, fuel, functioning utilities and well-resourced emergency systems instead faces the disaster after years of weakened public services, shortages and the loss of skilled professionals.
That is why this disaster should be read beyond Venezuela. In California, engineers have already begun pointing again to the danger of older concrete buildings that may not withstand violent shaking. The world has seen the same pattern too many times in Turkiye, Nepal, Haiti and Pakistan.
The 2005 Kashmir earthquake killed at least 79,000 people and sent shockwaves in all directions. We heard then that construction codes would be transformed, that public buildings would be made safer, that lessons had been learned. Yet our own cities continue to grow in ways that should frighten anyone who has seen disaster up close.
For Venezuela, the immediate priority is clear and non-negotiable: rescue teams, medical supplies, clean water, generators, temporary shelter and structural engineers must reach the affected areas without delay or political interference. “The US stands ready, willing, and able to help,” US President Trump said in a Truth Social post, adding that he had instructed government agencies to prepare to move quickly. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also said Washington is rapidly deploying resources to assist in the aftermath of the quakes. That support should be welcomed if it saves lives.
But this disaster also arrives at a moment when the international aid system itself has been weakened. The dismantling of USAID has left questions over whether American disaster response can still move with the same speed and field capacity. *