Death Toll From Venezuela Quakes Rises to 4,490

Nearly three weeks after twin earthquakes flattened entire apartment blocks in La Guaira and Caracas, officials still have not released an estimate of how many remain missing.

The official death toll from Venezuela's devastating twin earthquakes rose to 4,490 on Sunday, Jorge Rodríguez, president of the country's National Assembly, announced on his official Telegram channel — an increase of roughly 150 from the 4,333 reported the day before. The number of injured remained unchanged at 16,740, while the government reported more than 19,500 people are now living in temporary camps due to the destruction.

A Disaster Weeks in the Making

The twin earthquakes struck on June 24, with a magnitude 7.2 tremor followed just 39 seconds later by a stronger magnitude 7.5 mainshock, both centered in Veroes Municipality, west of San Felipe in Yaracuy state. The quakes caused widespread devastation across northern Venezuela, hitting the capital Caracas and, especially hard, the coastal state of La Guaira, where roughly 80 percent of buildings reportedly collapsed. More than 1,000 aftershocks have followed in the weeks since.

According to the latest government figures, 190 buildings were completely destroyed and 856 others significantly damaged. Search and rescue teams have pulled 6,462 people from the rubble alive, while 32,401 people have been treated in hospitals and medical facilities. Aid has reportedly reached 120,794 families, with 19,583 people currently housed across 108 temporary camps and roughly 9,995 tons of food distributed to victims.

No Estimate for the Missing

Notably, Sunday's update did not include any estimate of how many people remain unaccounted for. In the immediate aftermath of the quakes, the United Nations had warned the number of missing could reach as high as 50,000, and unofficial missing-persons tracking efforts have continued to report tens of thousands still unlocated, though those figures have not been independently verified and may include people who were simply separated from family members rather than killed.

Linda Hornisberger of the Swiss search-and-rescue group REDOG has suggested that while communication in the disaster zone remains difficult, it is not so severe as to make contact with survivors impossible — leading her to suspect that most of those still missing are likely already dead. Some outlets have drawn comparisons to disasters like Hurricane Maria and the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, where governments took roughly a year to finalize casualty figures.

A Strained Recovery Effort

Venezuela's already strained healthcare infrastructure has complicated the recovery, with limited machinery and medical supplies slowing the broader response. Additional deaths from injuries sustained in the quakes are considered likely given ongoing capacity constraints. Four American urban search-and-rescue teams sent to assist in the disaster completed their mission and returned home in early July, having helped save six lives, according to US officials, while rescue teams from other countries, including Colombia, Jordan, and Chile, also took part in recovery efforts.

International aid has continued arriving in the country in the weeks since the disaster. Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil announced via Telegram that a Russian cargo flight carrying food and emergency supplies had landed as recently as this past week.

Stories From the Rubble

Amid the devastation, several dramatic rescues have offered rare moments of hope. Two days after the quakes, Dayana Patiño and her 18-day-old son were pulled alive from the rubble of their collapsed apartment building after more than 30 hours trapped, with rescuers managing to get water to the infant by sliding a straw through a pipe amid the debris. Days later, a father of two was rescued from beneath a destroyed shopping mall after a 120-hour operation, and a Colombian rescue team pulled an 11-year-old boy out alive after being trapped following the quakes.

Where Things Stand

Nearly three weeks on, Venezuela's death toll continues to climb daily as recovery crews work through unstable ruins across Caracas and La Guaira. With no missing-persons estimate included in the latest update and officials cautioning that a finalized toll could take considerable time to emerge, the full scale of the disaster's human cost remains uncertain.