June 30, 2026
Rescue teams in Venezuela were losing hope on Tuesday of finding more survivors of twin earthquakes that struck the country last week, following hours of gruelling work searching for victims beneath the rubble of collapsed buildings.
Rescue teams from Ecuador and the US halted operations early on Tuesday in Macuto, a town in La Guaira state — the area hardest hit by the Jun 24 earthquakes — after more than 40 hours of work, when they stopped receiving responses from a mother and her three children trapped beneath a nine-storey building.
"In the end, we believe the days have already passed and that what we will find now is death," said Major Jorge Montanero, leader of the EQ11 team from Guayaquil, located on Ecuador's Pacific coast.
"Unfortunately, things haven't developed favourably," he said as he stood amid rubble after cutting through four concrete slabs of the building in an effort to locate the four trapped victims.
