Friday, July 17th 2026 - 22:25 UTC
The true scale of the disaster remains surrounded by uncertainty
The official death toll from the double earthquake that struck northern Venezuela on June 24 rose on Friday to 5,069, after 139 new fatalities were added, according to the president of Parliament, Jorge Rodríguez. The tally, released via Telegram, keeps the number of injured at 16,740 and of people left homeless at 17,907. Authorities present these figures as provisional, more than three weeks after the disaster.
The two quakes, of magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5, struck barely 39 seconds apart, with epicenters in the country's northwest. The larger one was the most powerful recorded in Venezuela in more than a century. La Guaira state, on the central coast, was the hardest hit, with numerous buildings collapsing; damage was also reported in Caracas and other parts of the north.
The true scale of the disaster remains surrounded by uncertainty. The US Geological Survey had estimated a high probability that the death toll would exceed 10,000, and international organizations and media have warned that the figure could be considerably higher than the official one, with tens of thousands of people still missing. Efforts to verify the disaster's magnitude have been hampered by information restrictions in the country, where numerous websites remain blocked; the UN urged authorities to fully restore access to media and social networks.
