Residents of La Guaira, a coastal city in Venezuela, are enduring a harrowing ordeal after being struck by a devastating double earthquake. The scale of destruction is immense — entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble, families torn apart, and countless lives hanging in the balance.
Mounting Toll and Fading Hope
According to the latest official figures, at least 1,430 people have died and 3,238 have been injured across Venezuela. Yet fears are mounting that the death toll could rise dramatically: more than 55,000 people remain unaccounted for. Over 70,000 families have received emergency aid from authorities — but the fate of tens of thousands buried beneath collapsed buildings remains unknown.
With each passing hour, the chances of finding survivors dwindle. Search-and-rescue teams are racing against time, working in near-silence to detect even the faintest signs of life beneath the debris.
A Glimmer of Hope: An 11-Year-Old Rescued
In a rare moment of relief, Colombian urban search-and-rescue team USAR COL-1 successfully extracted an 11-year-old boy, Moisés, alive from the ruins in La Guaira after more than six hours of intense effort. The Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed the rescue on X (formerly Twitter), sharing video footage of the boy lying on a stretcher moments after his extraction.
“Moisés is safe! After six hours of an intense operation, Colombia’s USAR COL-1 team rescued the 11-year-old boy trapped under the rubble in La Guaira, Venezuela. One more life saved. Hope always…” read the ministry’s post.
Families Waiting in Agony
For many families in La Guaira, hope is now measured in heartbeats — and silence. Among them is Barbara Palacios, whose husband, Jonathan Suárez — a 36-year-old man — was buried under the ruins of a five-story hotel flattened by the quakes. She clings to belief: “Yes, he’s alive,” she says, tears streaming down her face — even as nearly 72 hours pass with no sign of him.
Barbara refuses to accept that her husband may be gone. Alongside relatives of five other missing people, she set up an impromptu roadblock on a main avenue, halting vehicles carrying civil protection personnel, firefighters, and volunteers — demanding action where help had failed to arrive.
“They just drove past — without stopping,” she recounts, sipping water nervously as rescue workers slowly clear rubble by hand and machine, inch by inch.