Venezuela's Quake Toll Nears 2,000 As Morgues Overflow And Anger Mounts
Venezuela's Quake Toll Nears 2,000 As Morgues Overflow And Anger Mounts Published By, Last Updated: July 01, 2026, 20:17 IST Twin quakes devastate Venezuela, with
Venezuela's Quake Toll Nears 2,000 As Morgues Overflow And Anger Mounts Published By, Last Updated: July 01, 2026, 20:17 IST Twin quakes devastate Venezuela, with 1,943 dead, over 10,000 injured, 15,000 displaced and 42,000 missing, UN warns toll will rise as Delcy Rodriguez faces mounting criticism This aerial picture shows buildings destroyed during twin earthquakes, in Caraballeda, La Guaira State, Venezuela, on June 27. (AFP photo) Two magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 quakes struck Venezuela on June 24, with the Venezuelan government saying on Tuesday that the confirmed death toll had reached 1,943, with more than 10,000 injured and 15,000 displaced. The figures are almost certainly incomplete: more than 42,000 missing-person reports have been filed with a tracking website run by the opposition, since the government has not released its own count of the missing. The United Nations has said that it was sourcing 10,000 body bags in anticipation that the toll will keep rising, a grim procurement task made harder by a country already gripped by years of economic collapse. The UN’s refugee agency said on Tuesday that basic services had ceased to function in the worst-hit areas. Searching For Survivors In La Guaira province, the epicentre of the destruction, officials have set up an improvised morgue beneath grain silos at the seaport, where a steady flow of bodies continues to arrive.
Workers there have been seen carrying coffins and spreading lime to mask the smell, while families gather outside for news of relatives. With no substantial government-led search-and-rescue effort under way, it has largely fallen to residents themselves to pull survivors and the dead from the rubble by hand, even as rescue teams from more than fifty countries arrive to assist. US Deportees Amongst Those Missing Among those unaccounted for are more than a hundred Venezuelans who had been deported from the United States just hours before the earthquakes hit; the hotel where they were reportedly staying collapsed in the disaster. One man, Maikol Heredia, located the body of his cousin at the La Guaira morgue, a relative who had been deported that same day after nine years away, and whom Heredia is now trying to raise roughly $850 to transport home, some 720 kilometres away. Another woman, Alicia Mendoza, has spent days searching hospitals and the makeshift morgue for her missing son, one of the deported group; a body initially presented to her under his name turned out not to be him. Hospitals have buckled under the strain, with the World Health Organization warning of overcrowded wards, mounting surgical backlogs and a breakdown in basic biosafety protocols.
The BriefWire