Nearly five days after twin earthquakes shattered Venezuela's northern coast, rescuers are still pulling people out alive — and the disaster has quietly reshaped the country's relationship with the world, turning the United States, which captured President Nicolás Maduro barely six months ago, into the logistical backbone of the relief effort.
The confirmed death toll rose to 1,450 on Sunday, with about 3,150 people injured, National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez said, according to CNN. For the first time, officials also put a number on the displacement: at least 12,721 people have lost their homes. UNICEF estimates that roughly 680,000 children now need humanitarian assistance, and aid groups are warning that psychological care will be a major part of the recovery.
Survivors found beyond the golden window
The "golden" 72-hour survival window closed Saturday evening, but the rescues have not stopped. In the disaster's most remarkable save yet, Salvadoran crews freed 60-year-old Belkys Josefina Barreto García alive after she spent 86 hours trapped, the result of an 11-hour operation that President Nayib Bukele documented on social media. Bolivian rescuers pulled two more survivors from the rubble over the weekend, and a CNN team in La Guaira watched a human chain of volunteers and civil-defense workers lift one person out alive, raising a fist to signal a heartbeat before the victim was rushed to an ambulance. U.S. firefighters from Fairfax County, Virginia helped save a father and son in the same state on Sunday.
The U.S. pivots to reopening Simon Bolivar Int'l Airport
The most consequential new development is military, not medical. U.S. Southern Command said a Contingency Response Element of 100 Air Force airmen arrived Sunday to begin repairing Simón Bolívar International Airport — the shuttered gateway to Caracas — to get it operational again, while 130 Marines were moving into La Guaira over the following 24 hours to reopen its port as an entry point for aid. Marines from Littoral Combat Force-24 and sailors from the USS Fort Lauderdale had already begun delivering supplies at the La Guaira port on Saturday. SOUTHCOM circulated footage it said came from a Venezuelan civilian showing Marines marching past a worksite as someone off-camera calls out, "USA, thank you!" — an image that would have been unthinkable in January, when U.S. forces seized Maduro from Caracas. From his jail cell in Brooklyn, the former president issued a solidarity message to Venezuelans on Sunday.
More flags in the field
The roster of foreign responders keeps widening. Turkish search-and-rescue teams — including personnel from the country's disaster agency AFAD and its armed forces, hardened by the 2023 earthquakes at home — were working a collapsed 14-story building in La Guaira's La Paez neighborhood. Ecuadorean firefighters joined the search for bodies in Caraballeda, and Peru's defense ministry sent more than 14 tons of aid, while India dispatched over 35 tons of supplies, medicine and equipment. They add to the roughly two dozen countries and well over 2,000 rescuers already deployed.
The government's recovery message
After a week of criticism over a slow and chaotic response, acting President Delcy Rodríguez leaned hard into a narrative of progress on Sunday, reporting that in La Guaira electricity had been restored to about 75%, potable water to 68%, and road infrastructure to roughly 90% — the last of which she stressed was vital for moving rescuers and equipment. Her government has also stood up a reconstruction fund of around $200 million for hospitals, housing and damaged infrastructure. Yet the frustration that boiled over last week has not subsided: families in the hardest-hit areas told CNN they were still waiting on heavy machinery and faster action, and the permit-only cordon sealing off La Guaira — which the government says is meant to keep roads clear for ambulances — remains in place, fueling complaints that officials are managing the optics as much as the emergency.
The arithmetic of the missing — still unresolved
The gap between official and unofficial counts of the missing remains the disaster's defining uncertainty. The government continues to speak in the hundreds, while families have registered tens of thousands of names; one independent database listed more than 11,200 missing in La Guaira state alone. Relief has also been physically set back by the aftershocks: a magnitude-4.7 jolt last week collapsed the bridge linking Caraballeda to the rest of La Guaira, severing a key route into one of the worst-hit zones.
For all the new arrivals and restored power lines, the picture five days in is one of a response finally gaining mass — foreign militaries reopening the airport and port, dozens of teams in the field, utilities flickering back — racing against a toll that everyone expects to keep climbing once La Guaira's full count is in.
