Lying on mattresses, sheets, chairs, tents and improvised camps, hundreds of people sleep on the asphalt, flower beds, squares and fields in Catia La Mar, one of the cities most affected by earthquakes of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 that occurred on Wednesday, June 24, 2026 in Venezuela and have claimed the lives of 589 people.
After two nights they are still out in the open, without being placed in a shelter and without shelter from the rain or sun.
“I haven’t slept for about two days now,” Nereixa Méndez, a housewife, told EFE who arrived at the parking lot of a pharmacy that was looted the day before and where dozens of people spent the night.
The 34-year-old woman indicated that her house, located in the La Lucha sector of Catia La Mar, is cracked. She lost a cousin in the earthquakes, while her mother and her husband managed to escape alive.
Waiting for authorities
Locals say that several trucks with food and water have arrived in this area.
In fact, a truck brought non-perishable food on Friday for these families, who lined up to wait for donations.
“We are very grateful for that,” Méndez added.
For his part, Jesús David Bello, pointed out that they are “just waiting for the competent authorities to see what they can solve.”
“No one has arrived,” he assures, except “some who arrive with water, cookies, bread.”
Bello, 70 years old, has a family of eight people and they all lived in the same house, according to him.
“We lost too much (…) that is destroyed,” he lamented.
UN: missing could be 50,000
The coastal state of La Guaira was declared a disaster area on Thursday by the president in charge of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez.
The earthquakes also affected other regions of the country, including Caracas, where buildings and various facilities collapsed.
The number of missing people due to the earthquakes could rise to 50,000, according to unconfirmed figures received by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Sources from the office told EFE that they handle these figures, not directly attributable to the UN, along with the 589 deaths confirmed and reported by the Venezuelan authorities and the 2,980 injured.
They added that urban search and rescue teams from other countries deployed now number 30, totaling 1,600 troops and 100 dogs to search for victims in the rubble: some are already on the ground and others will arrive in the next few hours or days.
Among the countries that have sent these teams, the UN cited Switzerland, the United States, the Netherlands, France, Qatar, the Czech Republic, Germany, Jordan, the United Kingdom, Spain, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Italy, El Salvador and Mexico.
According to calculations by another UN agencyAccording to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), up to 6.76 million people could have been affected by the earthquakes, including two million in the capital, Caracas.
