earthquakes

The interim government is still upset that the coverage of the disaster’s aftermath showed its faults in plain sight. So, it was answered by a manufactured lie. The State media system released a short “documentary” titled “Autopsy of a Lie”, claiming that the negligence in the official response to the June 24^th earthquakes is just a false narrative pushed by the media. 

In a fact-checking analysis to debunk it, Cazadores de Fake News reports the interim government is fishing to isolate quotes from the UN and the US officers as proof that the international community praised a State response “that existed, but was perceived by large parts of the affected population as insufficient.”

The propaganda effort to turn around the domestic and global backlash on the State’s reaction to the earthquakes merged with the officially-launched “reconstruction phase,” with both the Venezuela Reborn Plan and the accompanying economic assistance in the form of credits. However, the regime is not only trying to save its face, but using the earthquakes as a subject to focus attention on how they want to be seen, and remove it from where they don’t want eyes. 

The disaster made its entrance into the dialogue talks between delegations of the 2015 National Assembly (picked by the Trump administration) and the interim government: when announcing the start of the first round of talks on August 1st, “attention to the double earthquake” was not only put on the agenda, but placed at the top. “Strengthening of democracy” and “political rights and guarantees”, the issues that many see as the core reason for this process in the first place, were put as second and third, respectively.

On August 12, the first round of talks ended with a couple of agreements: the first one was a joint effort to recover the gold reserves held by the UK in the Bank of England for the quake’s recovery. This one seems like a confirmation of what Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said back on July 30, that one of the main positions of the government’s delegation during the dialogue talks was the lifting of most of the economic sanctions still in place.

“These are not times for polarization to insist; these are not times for miserly exploitation, these are times to lend a hand. And we’ll see that the biggest comfort to the pain that afflicts our souls is the rebirth,” Jorge Rodríguez said on July 24.

The second one was the beginning of a process that could eventually lead to the renovation of the Venezuelan Supreme Court (TSJ), seen as the first concrete step toward establishing a new electoral authority in the near future, a major achievement that cannot be underestimated. 

The introduction of the seismic disaster in the talks’ agenda might signal to the chavista base that the regime is controlling the matter, and looking to compensate for any other concessions made. 

On the other hand, what happened on June 24 could serve as a plausible pretext to avoid necessary reforms or flexibilize restrictions that Venezuelans have struggled with for many years is understandable for some, as economist Ricardo Hausmann told last month to Forbes Centroamérica:

“What happened in Venezuela is a human and economic tragedy… But the biggest risk is that the earthquake could become an excuse to continue depriving Venezuelans of their rights.”

This brings another aspect to consider: the open use of the tragedy for political messaging.

It’s normal that in times when a nation suffers some sort of calamity, that a response by those in power is to rally around national unity in times of crisis. This also happened in Venezuela after June 24, with both Delcy and Jorge Rodriguez repeatedly making public calls in that regard.

For example, Jorge Rodriguez said on July 24 in commemoration of the quakes’ first month: “These are not times for polarization to insist; these are not times for miserly exploitation, these are times to lend a hand. And we’ll see that the biggest comfort to the pain that afflicts our souls is the rebirth.” The use of the last word isn’t casual, as it was already in use for several weeks in State media and came a couple of weeks before the actual reconstruction plan was introduced.

But given the precedents when chavismo used this kind of messaging before, this is likely less targeted to the overall citizenry at large and instead focused on holding their internal coalition together. This has worked well with the higher echelons of power structures but for certain parts of the larger chavista movement, this message rings hollow in the wake of the cozy relation between the regime and the Trump administration. And they’re making themselves noticed.

They’re already doing that with the most pressing issue in most parts of the country: the electric crisis, which in the last week saw an increase in both the length of blackouts and the power bill.

On June 28, a group of former chavista officials (including former Vice-President Elias Jaua) signed a document titled “Declaration of Maracay” under the name Voices For National Independence, demanding the defense of national sovereignty and the Constitution, in response to “the situation of tutelage the country currently faces. The text called for a “wider national unity”. Early this month, there was a public demonstration in Caracas echoing those very same points.

After a month and half since the disaster, the interim government remains committed to navigating the next few months by using it as a narrative device that could help them weather the surging amount of problems ahead but exposing at length some of its previous failures. At the moment, they’re already doing that with the most pressing issue in most parts of the country: the electric crisis, which in the last week saw an increase in both the length of blackouts and the power bill.

The governors of Aragua and Carabobo pointed at the damage caused by the June 24 quakes to the electricity generation system as one of the reasons behind it. Diosdado Cabello made the same talking point a few days later, while also blaming the Súper Niño event.

As the State is adjusting the effects of the disaster into other issues, public opinion is putting the magnifying glass on its handling of the doublet earthquake. Neighboring Colombia recently suffered a terrible seismic event of its own, but comparisons between how the two nations and their respective governments responded soon started to appear.

Bogota, Colombia – One week after a magnitude 7.4 earthquake rocked western Colombia, rescue efforts continue despite the razor-thin chances of survival.

The disaster response, however, is entering a new phase as rescue teams wind down operations and aid organisations begin focusing on housing those made homeless by the earthquake and providing basic necessities.

While official data reveals vast destruction of homes, schools, hospitals, and businesses, the full scale of the devastation continues to be assessed.

Fifteen of Colombia’s 32 provinces were affected by the earthquake, which killed at least 289 people and injured 4,187.

The earthquake struck San Jose del Palmar, a rural town in Colombia’s Pacific region, and devastated swaths of nearby cities like Pereira, Quibdo, and Cali.

In total, 127,557 homes were damaged, and were 26,945 destroyed. The disaster also devastated other institutions, including 285 health centres and 2,838 educational facilities.

Economic infrastructure sustained significant damage, with 407 roads, 92 water supply systems, 44 vehicular bridges, and five airports affected.

In the past week, emergency response teams have carried out an unrelenting rescue effort that has saved 354 lives.

As of Sunday night, 143 people remain unaccounted for, according to government figures, though an unofficial online database called Colombia Te Busca (Colombia is looking for you) puts the number of missing at more than 3,000.

“It has been a gruelling week, with little time to rest, as we’ve been focused on searching for, locating, and rescuing potential victims,” said Sergeant Joel Bustamente, who is leading the Bogota Fire Department’s deployment in Cali.

He added that the chances of finding life under the rubble have dropped significantly, and response teams’ priorities are shifting towards a medium-term emergency.

“Certain search-and-rescue operations are no longer necessary, and we have now moved on to a phase in which reconstruction, demolition, and other types of operations… will begin,” said Bustamente.

In some places, such as the seven-storey Vanessa Building in Cali, efforts to find survivors have been paused altogether.

“Search and rescue operations have been suspended since Friday. They are now in the phase of recovering bodies,” said Enrique Zapata, head of logistics at Cali-based health NGO SARES, who has been helping with the emergency response at the Vanessa Building.

While the chances of finding life under the rubble drop sharply after the first 72 hours following an earthquake, others still hope.

“We never lose hope,” said Maximiliano Herrera, a volunteer rescuer in Cali, who added that the teams in charge had said the window for survival could be as long as 15 days.

In recent days, he said, local rescue efforts have been boosted by international teams from countries like Israel, the United States, and Mexico.

Housing the homeless

With more than 120,000 families affected by the earthquake, authorities are under pressure to shelter the homeless.

“In terms of long-term continuity or a medium-term response, the priority right now is clearly shelter and refuge,” said Egido Sanz, country director for Colombia at ActionAid, a UK-based anti-poverty NGO.

In cities like Cali and Pereira, local authorities have converted spaces such as sports stadiums and community centres into temporary shelters.

Veronica Echeverry, who oversees a shelter at a community hall in Cali, said that they have received help from citizens, hospitals, and local authorities.

The refuge doubles as an aid collection point, receiving and distributing donations of food, water, hygiene supplies and clothes.

“This support network has allowed us to respond immediately to some of the most urgent needs of the affected families,” said Echeverry.

But she also noted that few of those who have lost their homes have needed to go to shelters, largely because they come from wealthier areas and can depend on family and friends for housing.

Today, only two people are staying at the shelter, which has 11 beds.

Neglected regions

While demand for shelter is limited in major cities like Cali and Pereira, Echeverry said other areas desperately need assistance.

In places like Choco – Colombia’s poorest department – the earthquake has hit especially hard due to existing challenges.

“It is a crisis that comes on top of another major crisis that already existed,” said ActionAid’s Sanz.

Choco was not only the epicentre of the earthquake; it is also a hotbed for armed conflict, drug trafficking and illegal gold mining.

Cities like Quibdo, the provincial capital, are a hub for people displaced by violence. In the city of roughly 130,000 people, some 2,723 homes were damaged, 1,337 of which are now uninhabitable.

But residents say the government has been slow to act.

“There has been no institutional response at the national level regarding the construction of temporary or permanent shelters,” said Yilson Marmolejo, a Quibdo local.

Meanwhile, the situation in the wider province, much of which is only accessible by river, remains unclear.

“There are places where, even today, the true situation has not yet been fully understood,” said Sanz.

Economic and political fallout

The earthquake has also unleashed vast economic destruction in Colombia.

Sixty-five-year-old Nestor Martinez has owned a bicycle shop in Buenaventura for 25 years. But the earthquake ravaged his store, wrecking its awning, toppling walls, and crushing merchandise.

Martinez has spent the last week cleaning up the debris and conducting an audit of the damage.

He estimates that the cost of the disaster for him is approximately 350 million pesos ($111,000). But, like many Colombians, he does not have business insurance.

“You have to scrape together money wherever you can to get back on your feet,” he said.

Martinez is one of hundreds of thousands who will need support from the government to rebuild their lives.

Donations have poured in from around the world, including a 2 million euro ($2.3m) pledge from the European Union and $15.5m from the US.

President Abelardo de la Espriella, meanwhile, has pledged a reconstruction fund to repair the damage, which his finance minister estimated to be at least $6.4bn.

The president also declared an economic emergency, granting him powers to raise funds through new taxes, but the right-wing statesman has instead opted to increase borrowing, primarily through a $450m credit line from the World Bank.

The earthquake represents the first major test for the leader, who was inaugurated just three days before it struck. He has faced criticism for abstaining from a handover process with the previous government, muddying the disaster response, and for politicising aid by saying he would only accept rescue teams from Israel, El Salvador, and the US – countries ideologically aligned with his government.

Although the country is beginning to turn to the long-term consequences of the disaster, emergency responders continue the arduous labour of digging through the rubble.

“The search for survivors continues; there’s always the possibility of miracles,” said Sergeant Bustamente.

Thousands of people are waiting for aid in the eastern Indonesia region hit by a powerful earthquake that killed dozens of people, as rescuers combed through collapsed buildings in search of people trapped beneath the rubble.

Late on Monday, the death toll was raised from 54 to 68, said Berton SP Panjaitan, an official at Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency, adding that more than 200 ⁠have been injured.

Many residents on Flores island in East Nusa Tenggara province spent Monday searching for loved ones and waiting for aid to arrive in communities still cut off by the magnitude 7.7 earthquake.

During Indonesia’s Independence Day ceremony in the capital, Jakarta, President Prabowo Subianto asked participants to pray for people affected by disasters in East Nusa Tenggara and other parts of the country while leading a nationwide moment of silence honouring the nation’s independence heroes.

More than 1,300 homes were damaged when the quake struck East Nusa Tenggara on Saturday. Nearly 250 were destroyed on Flores alone. Dozens of public buildings, including educational and health facilities as well as government offices, were also affected.

The province’s governor declared a 14-day state of emergency on Sunday.

About 12,800 people were unable to return to their homes by Monday morning and were dispersed among temporary shelters in several towns on Flores, Berton Suar Pelita Panjaitan, spokesman for Indonesia’s BNPB national disaster agency, told the AFP news agency.

Thousands of people on Flores camped outside collapsed homes under tarpaulin tents overnight into Monday, sleeping outside because of the danger of more aftershocks.

“Our houses are no longer liveable because many have collapsed and are full of cracks, so we can’t go inside any more,” Mbay resident Junaidin, 32, told AFP outside his self-made tent that was sleeping about 30 people.

For many residents, the disaster revived painful memories of a powerful earthquake and tsunami that struck Flores in 1992, killing about 2,500 people.

“We’re on our own here,” said Junaidin, who like many Indonesians has one name. He expressed frustration with a perceived lag in the arrival of aid.

“As for help from the government, there hasn’t been any – no tents, no medicine, no food, no drinking water, nothing,” Junaidin said.

The Indonesian air force said it was bringing 13 tonnes of emergency aid airlifted in two Hercules transport planes and a Boeing.

It was also deploying helicopters to bring emergency supplies directly to survivors in isolated communities, the Antara state news agency quoted the commander of El Tari airbase in Kupang on Timor island as saying.

The aid included food, clothes, clean water and emergency medical equipment.

The military has deployed personnel to help with distribution in key hubs.

Rescuers were combing the stricken area for victims despite not receiving any reports about missing people, search and rescue official Fathur Rahman told AFP on Monday.

Indonesia will also build an emergency field hospital in several areas to treat the injured, Deputy Health Minister Benjamin Paulus Octavianus said.

Al Jazeera’s Jessica Washington, reporting from Ruteng in East Nusa Tenggara, said medical staff there had to quickly assemble a tent hospital after the hospital was damaged.

While doctors said they have a sufficient supply of medicine, they weren’t able to get to essential equipment that allows them to perform blood tests and X-rays, which means they are “having to treat patients in very difficult conditions”, Washington said.

Many elderly patients “are being exposed to the intense heat of the daytime” and the “rather cold” evening temperatures, which complicates doctors’ ability to treat them, Washington added.

Indonesia experiences frequent earthquakes due to its location along the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, an arc of intense seismic activity stretching from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.

A magnitude 9.1 tremor in 2004 struck off the coast of Sumatra and triggered a tsunami that killed 220,000 throughout the region, about 170,000 of them in Indonesia.

It was one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history.

A powerful earthquake that struck eastern Indonesia has killed at least 51 people and forced about 5,000 people to evacuate, as rescue teams work to clear roads blocked by landslides and reach survivors still trapped under rubble.

The magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck at 5:58am local time on Saturday (21:58 GMT, Friday), with its epicentre about 68km (42 miles) north-northwest of the city of Ende, on Flores Island, East Nusa Tenggara province, according to the US Geological Survey, which put the depth at 10km (6.2 miles).

The earthquake, followed by some 341 aftershocks, is one of Indonesia’s deadliest in years.

A total of 36 people were seriously injured and 77 more suffered minor injuries, Deputy Health Minister Benjamin Paulus Octavianus told a televised meeting on Sunday.

More than 3,300 people in Sikka regency, one of the hard-hit areas, either fled their homes or were left stranded, taking shelter in a sports arena, according to Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency, BNPB.

“The quake was massive, the shock was so strong, we were resting at home with family,” Nona, a 51-year-old resident of Talibura village, told the Reuters news agency. “There were 13 of us inside the house, and we all ran to save ourselves.”

In the port town of Maumere, some residents camped outside collapsed homes under tarpaulin tents, while others received treatment in a makeshift tent outside a local hospital.

“Almost all of Sikka’s residents didn’t dare stay indoors, so they slept on a porch or a tent outside,” Simon Sabandi, the region’s deputy chief, told news channel KompasTV.

Lieutenant General Suharyanto, the BNPB head, said the earthquake destroyed at least 157 houses and damaged nearly 200 more, forcing about 2,000 villagers in Nagekeo regency, the area closest to the epicentre, into temporary shelters.

He said three helicopters and a rescue vessel had been deployed to support the emergency response in a region where the scattered geography of small islands makes access difficult.

East Nusa Tenggara police chief Rudi Darmoko said the disaster had caused severe damage and building collapses across the province.

Rescue teams have yet to fully reach Nagekeo, where landslides have blocked roads and disrupted communications, said Fathur Rahman, head of the local search and rescue agency in Maumere, adding that a team was attempting to reach the area by ferry.

More than 3,500 military and police personnel have been deployed overall, Cabinet Secretary Teddy Indra Wijaya said. More than 1,300 homes have been damaged, and 20 petrol stations remain shut due to power outages, according to state energy firm Pertamina.

Officials are considering declaring a state of emergency for East Nusa Tenggara, which would unlock further resources and funding.

A tsunami warning issued immediately after the earthquake has since been lifted.

Reporting from Jakarta, Al Jazeera’s Jessica Washington said aftershocks could continue for “several days”, with authorities in the island’s northern areas ordering further evacuations as the true scale of the damage is still “emerging”.

She said several affected areas remain inaccessible to first responders and that local authorities have urged residents to stay away from shorelines and damaged buildings.

The same stretch of coastline was struck by a similarly powerful earthquake in December 1992, when the quake and the tsunami it triggered killed more than 2,500 people on Flores, Indonesia’s geophysics agency said.

Indonesia, a nation of some 290 million people spread across roughly 17,000 islands, sits on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, making it one of the world’s most seismically active countries.

Cali, Colombia – A day after a magnitude 7.4 earthquake shook western Colombia, rescue teams are frantically fighting through the rubble of collapsed buildings to find survivors and recover bodies.

The powerful quake has caused at least 254 deaths nationwide, most of them concentrated in the cities of Pereira and Cali, according to government figures.

“For me, the earthquake felt eternal,” recalled Luis Saenz, a 22-year-old journalism student from Cali.

Saenz was at home enjoying his morning coffee when the quake struck at 7:34am (12:34 GMT) on Monday. He remembers his cat darting under the bed, then chaos as his family fled into the street.

Some 5,000 homes suffered damage, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, while dozens of buildings – many of them residential – collapsed entirely.

In Cali, Colombia’s third-largest city, at least 95 people died, and 45 structures have fully or partially collapsed, according to local government statistics.

“I never thought I would see my city like this,” resident Maria Isabel Cumbal said between sobs, as she watched rescue efforts unfold at the Vanessa Building in the south of the city.

The seven-storey residential apartment block was reduced to wreckage in Monday’s earthquake.

Rescuers now wield hammers, shovels and heavy machinery in an attempt to pierce through thick slabs of concrete and rescue the estimated 20 people trapped underneath.

On and around the collapsed residence, hundreds of volunteers help to clear the rubble by forming a human chain to pass buckets from atop the mound of debris down to dump trucks.

Every so often, a rescuer will hold up a fist to call for silence, so that emergency responders can listen for signs of life.

Search and rescue teams are racing against time across western Colombia after a powerful earthquake killed at least 132 people and left thousands missing, authorities say.

The magnitude 7.4 quake struck on Monday, rattling Cali, Quibdo, Pereira and dozens of other cities and towns. About 1,600 buildings have been reported damaged or collapsed, with soldiers, emergency crews and residents working side by side, passing chunks of concrete by hand as they search for survivors under the rubble.

Families are posting details of missing relatives on citizen-run websites; by Monday night more than 2,700 people had been reported missing. In El Cairo, near the epicentre in San Jose del Palmar, local officials say 80 percent of the town, home to about 7,000 people, has been damaged. Many of its traditional houses, made of sticks and mud, crumpled in the tremors.

President Abelardo de la Espriella, facing his first major crisis since taking office on Friday, has deployed “the entire military and police apparatus”, sending engineers, rescue teams and search dogs into the worst-hit areas. The US has pledged $15.5m in emergency aid, as regional governments also offer support to one of Colombia’s poorest and most isolated regions.

DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,

Emergency teams are still assessing the impact of the quake that was felt across the region.

A powerful 7.4-magnitude earthquake has struck western Colombia and neighbouring countries, prompting widespread evacuations.

The earthquake struck on Monday near the municipality of San Jose del Palmar in Colombia’s Choco region, about 400km (250 miles) west of the capital, Bogota, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and Colombia’s geological service. Colombia had initially put its magnitude at 6.6 on the Richter scale.

The USGS said the quake occurred at a depth of about 107km (66 miles). The US tsunami warning system said there was no tsunami warning.

“We have just experienced a major earthquake in the department of Choco. We are concerned about aftershocks,” Choco Governor Nubia Carolina Cordoba-Curi said on X. “Although the epicentre was near San Jose del Palmar, there are injuries and significant damage to buildings in the capital, Quibdo. We are already carrying out a damage assessment and will issue the first official report shortly.”

Authorities in Colombia and Ecuador urged residents in affected areas to remain alert as emergency teams assessed the quake’s impact.

In the capital, Bogotá, the earthquake triggered car and building alarms as people fled into the street.

Bogota Mayor Carlos Galán said on social media shortly after the earthquake that there were no reports of injuries, and only some cracks in buildings.

“No serious structural damage has been reported in Bogota, so our resources are at the service of the country,” Galan wrote. “We stand in solidarity with the affected cities. We will continue to address this emergency and provide assistance as needed.”

News outlets aired footage of buildings also destroyed in cities such as Pereira and Manizales in a tourist region called Eje Cafetero.

The mayor of Pereira, Colombia, said that 18 people had died there.

Two people are dead in Manizales, the Associated Press reported.

In Medellin, the earthquake prompted evacuation sirens from apartment buildings, with people fleeing their homes wearing pajamas or, simply, a wrapped-around towel. No full collapses were reported in the city, nor casualties. Mayor Federico Gutierrez of Medellin suspended the normal operation of the city’s metro, citing necessary checks for infrastructural damage.

Small towns on the outskirts of Medellín report structural damage including caved-in roofs and fractured walls.

In Cali, which is southwest of Bogota, at least 25 buildings collapsed, and authorities on the ground have confirmed “at least one casualty”. Mayor Alejandro Eder confirmed the installation of a Unified Command Center in the city, and pleaded for support from “sister cities” Medellin and Bogota.

The quake comes weeks after two powerful earthquakes struck Venezuela in late June, killing more than 6,000 people and destroying hundreds of buildings. The tremors, measuring 7.2 and 7.5 in magnitude, were among the deadliest earthquakes to hit the region in recent years.

This video, made by a teenager who was living in one of the OPPP buildings in Vargas state, is one of the most moving visual documents of a tragedy that abounds in them.

If you are brave enough to watch it to the end, you’ll be moved by the crying around the kid trying to save his life without turning off the camera, his effort to get out of his room just after the earthquake that shook Vargas state, the desperation of the people looking for their relatives, shouting the names of their kids. The continuous shot of outstanding cinematic quality leads us down the stairs onto the streets where an entire community begins to run for shelter and to take the wounded to someplace where someone can save their lives. You see that the building is standing but irremediably damaged, that it will be impossible to inhabit again. These people have lost everything in an instant, and they are just realizing it. And you realize, with them, the depth, the extent of their vulnerability. 

This is a complex built with oil money by a government that was desperate to get its president reelected at any cost, even if that president was dying of cancer and telling everyone he was fine. The same government, with another president that no one elected, is in place several years later. During the first thirteen minutes this video recorded, the immediate aftermath, we see no police, no firemen, no rescuers. The only trace of the State is the damaged building. Well, way more than thirteen minutes would pass, and that community of people would have to remove their dead from the rubble with no help from the State.

Between 2011 and 2015, the OPPP managed approximately $3.3 billion, calculated using the official exchange rates for each year. There was no transparency regarding the use of these funds. The office received 1.17 billion the year Chávez was last re-elected.

The State failed them. It failed to prevent this tragedy. It failed to respond to it. It’s failing at learning from it. And all this is deliberate: it’s part of a model of exerting power and extracting everything from the nation.

The failure at preventing

The OPPP buildings we see in the video (shorthand for the Presidential Office for Special Plans and Projects, known for housing people displaced by the 2010 floods, a landmark component of the Gran Misión Vivienda Venezuela) are a dramatic example of the lack of safeguards during construction, particularly in public housing complexes. In previous reporting, we have noted that both private and public residential buildings were severely affected by the earthquakes, and that drawing broad political conclusions from the rubble alone would be imprudent. However, there are documented cases in which the State actively disregarded construction practices that could have better prepared infrastructure to withstand the double earthquake.

According to Armando.Info, the OPPP’s first president, architect Francisco “Farruco” Sesto, once acknowledged that soil studies were not conducted due to the need to deliver fast. Independent assessments showed that buildings of that scale simply could not comply with safeguards in that time frame and that the local soil requires extensive studies. Beyond that significant omission, the construction process was marked by limited financial transparency and opaque contracting practices. Even before the earthquakes, residents had raised concerns about vulnerabilities in the buildings. After the disaster, Armando.Info identified that nearly 4 out of every 10 OPPP towers collapsed, while 27 suffered serious structural damage.

Speed was also the priority with the Hugo Chávez complex in Playa Grande. More than 150 of its 196 buildings were crushed, sunken, or tilted, while even those that remained standing suffered significant internal damage. As with the OPPP developments, Armando.Info found no publicly available records confirming that detailed soil studies were conducted before construction. They were made by a company called Summa, which was awarded the contract within the framework of the Venezuela-Türkiye Agreement of 2011. The complex reached an estimated population density of approximately 450 people per hectare, three times the 150 inhabitants per hectare permitted for that type of terrain. Independent assessments have also raised the strong possibility of inadequate foundations, while the compressed construction schedule may have made strict compliance with seismic-resistance regulations more difficult. Community spokespeople speak of more than 3,000 affected families.

Despite extensive efforts of citizen-led initiatives to try to find missing people, there is still no official number reported by the State.

Between 2011 and 2015, the OPPP managed approximately $3.3 billion, calculated using the official exchange rates for each year. There was no transparency regarding the use of these funds. The year with the largest budget was 2012, when the office received approximately $1.17 billion, during an election year.

This is part of a broader pattern of simply ignoring seismic-resistant regulations. Physicist Raúl Estévez pointed out that Venezuelan scientists have been engaging with the question of seismic activity and risk prevention in the country for decades, including seismic microzoning of urban areas, but the State did not take active effort to increase the country’s capability to resist earthquakes. In fact, it did the opposite. Geologist Luiraima Salazar echoed a similar statement: “Buildings were raised on land whose stability, bearing capacity, shear resistance, or behavior during an earthquake required much more detailed and specialized studies or simply incorporating all the knowledge generated in the country’s geoscience faculties, because all this was already known, but was somehow ignored by those who had decision-making power. That is why some areas are more vulnerable than others, not only because they are close to an active fault, but because they combine unfavorable soils, poor construction, high density of population, unstable slopes, poorly prepared essential services and bad political decisions in the management of territorial planning based on geological risk.”

All is compounded by Venezuela’s prolonged complex humanitarian emergency,  with food insecurity, an unstable electrical grid, and a healthcare system in which, according to Transparencia Venezuela, only 40% of operating rooms were functional, 74% lacked surgical supplies, and approximately 60% of hospitals lacked running water. The country was simply not well positioned to face an emergency of the scale of the double earthquake. 

The failure at responding

The State’s response was extremely delayed compared to international standards. Within the first 24 hours, reports Transparencia Venezuela, the government deployed only 12.6% of its peak personnel. That figure reached 34.6% after 48 hours. The maximum deployment of 31,837 civilian and military officials was not achieved until day 18, well past the crucial 72-hour “golden window” when rescuing survivors is most feasible.  

According to The Wall Street Journal, in the first few hours after the tragedy, the government also hindered the efforts of rescue workers by blocking or delaying international rescue teams, demanding they obtain safe conduct passages and forcing them to participate in propaganda-related activities, all while dismissing the massive citizen reaction as a “media matrix”. The delays were costly in lives, time and money, with the flight detour costing another $20,000 in fuel for the jet that a private donor had lent them. “Rescue teams say they squandered hours waiting to receive their equipment and luggage at the overwhelmed airport in Valencia, a two-hour drive from the disaster. Some said they were forced to take photos with (Delcy) Rodríguez, which were then posted on her social-media accounts”.

A similar sentiment was echoed by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which listed bureaucratic delays as a factor that can delay humanitarian response during the first few months of 2026. However, they mentioned that they have maintained good coordination with local authorities. 

Even the government admitted to blocking affected areas, which prevented volunteers from accessing. So, during the first 48 hours, most of the people who were rescued alive were rescued by neighbors, local volunteers, and self-evacuated, digging with their bare hands without heavy machinery. In addition, despite the fact that, according to Transparencia Venezuela, the State spent billions of dollars over two decades on a fleet of 59 heavy and medium transport aircraft (such as Mi-26 helicopters and Y-8 planes), there was little to no evidence of their effective use during the emergency.

To mitigate this absence, private machinery had to be mobilized from miles away to assist with rescue operations. On the site of the tragedy, multiple reports alleged that members of the National Guard and CICPC looted the rubble. This footage gained traction on social media and became a symbol of the government response to the tragedy. 

In addition to hindering rescue operations, the state also tried to control the flow of information. Operations on the ground in Caracas have reported limits for on-site inspections and have highlighted the inconsistent reporting on the damages and casualties of the earthquake. For instance, despite extensive efforts of citizen-led initiatives to try to find missing people, there is still no official number reported by the State. The lack of centralized information makes the work of international aid organizations and humanitarian workers more difficult.

State communications mention more than 600 “delivered” housing units in the weekly “reconstruction stage” updates. This timeline is excessively rushed, especially considering the amount of soil studies and other preventative measures that must be taken to build safely in La Guaira.

The international standards, based on the experience from so many tragedies around the world, recommend registering and managing volunteers according to their different capabilities, assigning working areas for all of them, and trusting in experts like UN agencies to administer the supplies that are suddenly sent to the disaster area. It’s essential to trace what came in, from whom, where it is, and to whom it was delivered. In Venezuela, however, doing this work means competing with a State that never wants anyone to supplant it (unless it is Southern Command marines). 

One source with knowledge of inspections in Caracas says the government blocked access to La Guaira and tried to absorb all the information the engineers were generating while reviewing the damage in the capital, but refused to share its own data. This time, fortunately, foreign presence prevented the police from arresting engineers, as the regime always does with anyone who is trying to break the theoretical monopoly of the State to care for the population. This is consistent with the deliberate opacity and the highly inconsistent casualty figures, which severely underreported the scale of the damage. While official figures claimed 856 affected buildings, independent satellite estimates from NASA radar suggested around 58,870 structures were damaged or destroyed.

Just as there were delays in the deployment of rescue workers, the state’s response was characterized by significant delays in the distribution of humanitarian aid. The Transparencia Venezuela report mentions that, of more than 150 collection centers in Caracas and the affected areas, only three were operated by the State. Furthermore, it highlights potential traceability problems. For example, despite a significant number of donations being reported from 133 international donors (including the IMF, the US government, and UN offices) as of the report’s cutoff date, none of the more than $781 million appeared to be confirmed or verified in the UN tracking system.

The tracking problems persist. Although the State reported distributing 9,585 tons of food and thousands of liters of water, there is simply no breakdown clarifying which of these supplies came from international aid, its own resources, or national donations. Moreover, a striking example of the traceability problems was the discovery of boxes labeled “Humanitarian Aid” in Maturín, Monagas state, hundreds of kilometers from the affected areas. The boxes had been donated by the Panama City Hall. However, due to doubts about the transparency of the delivery process, city hall officials hid GPS devices in the boxes, which helped locate them in the eastern part of the country. Nevertheless, Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello dismissed the accusations.

These traceability and tracking errors represent a significant risk to reconstruction efforts in the affected areas, as the arrival of hundreds of millions of dollars to a State with fragile institutions and high levels of opacity can lead to the funds being used for rent-seeking or money laundering. Experts warn, in fact, that the greatest risk of corruption occurs in the months following a tragedy. However, one also has to worry that the State seems to be failing to learn from this experience, because this isn’t the kind of knowledge that is useful to preserve power.

The failure at learning

In the weeks following the earthquakes, the State opted to repeat the patterns from past tragedies: announcements of accelerated construction, political patronage, and propaganda. Interim authorities have repeatedly promised that the government will provide housing for those affected by the earthquake before the end of the year. They already mentioned more than 600 “delivered” housing units in the weekly “reconstruction stage” updates. This timeline is excessively rushed, especially considering the amount of soil studies and other preventative measures that must be taken to build safely in La Guaira. In fact, the first of these “deliveries,” which took place on July 20, did not include new properties. They were homes in Fuerte Tiuna intended for chavista officials. Yes, that huge military facility where Nicolas Maduro was living until January 3. 

According to reports by El Pitazo, the recipients of these homes were officials from the La Guaira Governor’s Office, the National Integrated Customs and Tax Administration Service (SENIAT), and other government agencies. Authorities argued that, given that Fuerte Tiuna is a strategic military point, residents should be selected through careful vetting, which, according to the report, included proven loyalty to the political process in power. It is difficult to separate this from the clientelistic tradition of chavismo.

According to AUAEV’s first director, Carlos Genatios, the agency’s work was repeatedly subordinated to political interests.

The distribution process also served as an opportunity for political propaganda. Images of grateful families were shared on State social media channels and complemented a communications strategy that positions Rodríguez as a “stateswoman” in an active, leading role within her government. This shift contrasts with the more impersonal nature of the “Free Venezuela Mission” and is the central theme of communications for the “Venezuela Reborn Mission” reconstruction plan.

This is a model

The most concerning aspect of the government’s response is that it is neither new nor accidental. Rather, it reflects a governing logic that has repeatedly emerged in the aftermath of major disasters. 

The first large-scale example came 26 years ago, when catastrophic floods and landslides devastated La Guaira in what remains Venezuela’s deadliest natural disaster. Faced with a humanitarian emergency that left thousands dead and displaced, the Chávez government transformed reconstruction into a political project. In practice, this meant prioritizing political results over the deliberate and methodical work of institutional planning and risk reduction. 

Reconstruction became a vehicle for political messaging, technical expertise was repeatedly subordinated to political conflict, and new housing programs increasingly prioritized speed over long-term resilience. 

For instance, one of the most ambitious reconstruction efforts was led by the Autoridad Única del Estado Vargas (AUAEV), a government agency created to coordinate the work of geologists, engineers and urban planners tasked with rebuilding the region and reducing its vulnerability to future natural disasters. According to its first director, Carlos Genatios, the agency’s work was repeatedly subordinated to political interests. Local and national authorities reportedly sabotaged reconstruction by dumping debris onto roads and drainage systems that had already been cleared, obstructing coordination with international experts, withholding critical information and derailing long-term planning during the 2000 electoral season. Most importantly, key mitigation works were severely compromised by the usage of inadequate construction materials, weakening efforts to build a more resilient La Guaira. 

Political scientists Maryhen Jiménez, Rebecca Hanson, Benedicte Bull and Verónica Zubillaga describe the chavista regime as a predatory State: one that prioritizes the extraction and distribution of resources for political survival over the provision of public goods, institutional capacity and accountability. For decades, chavismo has morphed governing institutions into arms of a structure aimed at both siphoning the country’s wealth and repressing dissent. Yet, the process of disaster response requires careful planning, deliberate construction and freedom of information, characteristics that are simply not compatible with chavismo’s model. 

While rushed housing projects continue to be announced and meaningful information sharing remains absent, it is becoming increasingly clear that rebuilding La Guaira will require far more than pouring new foundations and raising new apartment blocks. It will require rebuilding the institutions responsible for deciding where, how, and under what standards those buildings are constructed. Institutions willing to share information and coordinate with international organizations and, most importantly, institutions able to deliver timely aid to those in need. 

National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez says 6,125 people confirmed dead as government response faces scrutiny.

The Venezuelan government has announced that the confirmed death toll from a pair of heavy earthquakes that struck the country in June has risen to 6,125 people.

National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez announced the updated figures on Monday, stating in a post shared on the Telegram messaging app that 61,000 people had been treated in hospitals.

The announcement comes as the Venezuelan government, headed by interim President Delcy Rodriguez, faces mounting criticism for shortcomings in the government’s response to the deadly earthquakes.

As Venezuelans searched for missing friends and loved ones in the aftermath of the quakes, some criticised the government and military forces for their perceived failure to do enough to help residents.

The magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 earthquakes occurred on June 24, with the coastal state of La Guaira and the national capital, Caracas, hit the hardest.

Rodriguez said that 16.5 percent of debris from the tremors has been removed, but questions have continued about the country’s path to recovery.

A report from the World Bank has placed the physical damage from the earthquakes at nearly $20bn. Despite pledges of support from countries around the world in the days following the earthquake, it remains unclear where such funds might come from.

The United States has maintained a high degree of control over Venezuela since abducting former President Nicolas Maduro in a military raid in January, and some US economic sanctions from Maduro’s tenure in office remain in place. Advocates have called for the remaining sanctions to be loosened or cancelled to help facilitate the flow of funds into Venezuela.

A magnitude 5.4 earthquake struck Egypt, north of Suez early on Monday, startling a content creator during a livestream. Tremors were felt as far as Gaza, prompting residents to evacuate homes and hotels. No casualties were reported.

Japanese PM Takaichi says it’s a ‘race against time’ to rescue those still trapped in the mall and others affected by the quake.

Thousands of shoppers and store employees, quickly evacuated by staff after a magnitude 7.1 earthquake, watched in horror as an explosion ripped through Kumamoto’s Aeon mall, exposing steel beams and catapulting debris across the parking lot.

Workers in and around one of southern Japan’s largest shopping centres described being thrown to the ground and enveloped in a disorienting cloud of dust by the explosion that followed the massive quake on Tuesday.

“I thought a bomb had gone off,” Takateru Sonoda, 41, who runs a combined hair salon and cafe near the mall, told news agency Jiji Press.

“There were people calling on others to evacuate, and sirens were ringing out. Nearby roads were gridlocked; it was a state of panic.”

First responders, initially fearful of entering the wreckage, hauled eight people from the partially collapsed site early on Wednesday, three dead among them.

The status of three shop workers remains unknown, Aeon said, adding that it was investigating a possible gas leak as a potential cause for the explosion.

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said on Wednesday that it was a “race against time” to rescue those trapped in the mall and others affected by the quake.

About 170 soldiers have been deployed to help with rescue operations at the site.

All 25 cats left behind in a cat cafe during the hasty evacuation were rescued on Wednesday, the cafe owner said in a social media post, thanking rescue workers.

Aeon mall had just reopened last month, a new and improved shopping and entertainment complex, after its recovery from another deadly tremor a decade ago.

After being badly damaged in the magnitude 7.3 Kumamoto earthquake in April 2016, the operator highlighted its seismically reinforced ceilings and overall improvements to safety and resilience.

Across the street, in a pub about 300 metres (330 yards) from the mall, Kazuya Tsurunaga was cleaning up dishes and glasses broken by the quake when he heard the deafening blast.

“A large cloud of smoke was billowing up, and because the wind happened to be blowing, and the wind direction was toward the shop, it was like volcanic ash was falling around us,” he told broadcaster TBS.

Police officers and firefighters were wary of entering the wreckage because of the risk of further collapse amid a series of aftershocks, a police official said. By the end of Tuesday, more than 100 aftershocks had occurred in Kumamoto.

Aeon President Akio Yoshida told a news conference on Wednesday that staff evacuated 3,000 shoppers within half an hour after the quake hit. But an unlucky few were inside when, 50 minutes later, the explosion occurred.

“We confirmed that all customers had been evacuated. We believed that employees had also evacuated, but it later emerged that some people had remained inside, or returned for whatever reason,” Yoshida said, adding that one survivor was found injured in a toilet.

Video shot by a police officer inside the building early on Wednesday showed large sections of the ceiling collapsed, storefronts blown open and furniture strewn across the floor.

Yoshida said the possibility the explosion was caused by gas was “very high”, but that thorough investigations were needed to understand what went wrong.

“We had not fully anticipated that an explosion of this kind could occur,” he said. “We have never had an accident like this.”

A powerful earthquake struck Japan’s Kumamoto prefecture on the southwestern island of Kyushu on Tuesday, causing widespread damage, collapsing buildings and starting fires.

The quake was followed by aftershocks as emergency crews continued rescue operations and assessed the scale of the destruction.

Here is what we know so far:

What happened in Japan?

The magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck the Kumamoto prefecture on Kyushu island at 4:30pm (07:30 GMT) on Tuesday.

It was initially reported as magnitude 7.1, but the US Geological Survey (USGS) later revised its estimate to 6.8.

A tsunami advisory was issued immediately after the earthquake but was later lifted.

The earthquake caused widespread damage as buildings collapsed.

It sparked fires in Kumamoto City, the prefectural capital, trapped shoppers inside a partially collapsed shopping mall, cut power to thousands of homes, and left roads badly damaged.

Just after midnight on Wednesday (15:15 GMT Tuesday), a magnitude 4.1 aftershock struck Kumamoto prefecture, public broadcaster NHK reported.

Where did the earthquake hit?

According to the USGS, the epicentre was near the coastal city of Uto, about 48km (30 miles) southwest of Kumamoto City.

Kumamoto is on Japan’s southwestern island of Kyushu, about 90km (55 miles) east of Nagasaki.

As of 2019, Kumamoto City has an estimated population of 700,000.

The Kyushu region is also home to the Sendai Nuclear Power Plant in neighbouring Kagoshima prefecture, south of Kumamoto.

Officials said no abnormalities were detected at the two-reactor facility following the earthquake.

How powerful was the earthquake?

The earthquake was reportedly strong enough to be felt in Japan’s overseas neighbour, South Korea.

It caused extensive infrastructure damage. NHK footage showed parts of the Kyushu Expressway split apart, and a section of the wall surrounding Kumamoto Castle collapsed.

Authorities are still assessing the damage to buildings, bridges and other infrastructure.

What damage did the earthquake cause?

At the Aeon shopping mall in Kumamoto City, part of the second floor collapsed before a powerful explosion tore through the complex.

Employees helped evacuate about 200 shoppers when the quake struck, but the explosion came about an hour later, blowing out walls and exposing much of the steel framework.

NHK reported that 20 to 30 employees were initially unaccounted for. Witnesses also reported smelling gas in the area, although the cause of the explosion remains unclear.

The mall had reopened only last month after being rebuilt following the devastating Kumamoto earthquake in 2016.

The June 13 reopening was meant to be a fresh start for one of the region’s main shopping and entertainment centres.

After the 2016 disaster, a supermarket in the mall offered discounted rice balls to survivors, becoming a symbol of the recovery effort.

What do we know about the victims?

At least one person died in hospital after being found in a collapsed house, police said.

Twenty to 30 shopping mall workers were unaccounted for.

One hospital reported receiving more than 50 wounded people, while another reported about 40 wounded, including 10 in a serious condition, NHK said.

About 300,000 people have been instructed to go to evacuation centres, according to Reuters.

Are aftershocks expected?

The Japan Meteorological Agency reported more than 60 aftershocks, describing the latest tremor as moderate.

The aftershocks have complicated rescue efforts.

Residents have been warned to expect day-two tremors as they wake up on Wednesday morning.

Why is Japan prone to earthquakes?

Japan sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, where several major tectonic plates meet.

The country experiences thousands of earthquakes every year, as the Pacific, Philippine Sea, Eurasian and North American plates constantly shift against one another.

Strict building codes and regular earthquake drills have helped reduce casualties, but powerful earthquakes can still cause widespread destruction.

Minor tremors also occur, on average, every five minutes, according to Reuters.

A magnitude 7.1 earthquake has hit Kumamoto on Japan’s southern island of Kyushu, sending buildings swaying as people rushed to safety. Authorities have issued a tsunami alert following the quake.

A devastating double earthquake hit Venezuela on June 24, leaving a trail of destruction and thousands dead. Dozens of buildings collapsed in coastal La Guaira State, the worst affected in the South American country.

The natural disaster followed two unnatural catastrophes: a decade-plus of US-led economic sanctions, and the January 3 US bombing attack and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro.

But rather than sympathize with the beleaguered country, the Western media establishment seized the opportunity to continue demonizing the Bolivarian Revolution—while whitewashing Washington’s economic terrorism and its present efforts to tighten its semi-colonial stranglehold on the country (FAIR.org, 2/27/26).

An assault on public housing

The ground had barely stopped shaking when corporate media oligopolies took aim at one of the most visible pillars of Hugo Chávez’s legacy: Venezuela’s Great Housing Mission (GMVV).

A Washington Post headline (6/27/26) declared: “These Homes Rose out of Venezuela’s Socialist Revolution. Now They’re Rubble.”

An architect was quoted claiming that the damaged apartments had been “constructed hastily” to “meet a political deadline.” Though the Post claimed Chávez launched the housing program to secure votes for the 2012 election, the only beneficiary the paper could find received her home in 2014.

AFP (6/29/26) singled out damage to a GMVV complex—“once touted as part of former strongman leader Hugo Chavez’s flagship housing program”—arguing that it “symbolize[d] the country’s dire situation.” Dozens of buildings geared toward tourism, including hotels and high-rises built for short-term rentals, in this neighborhood of Catia La Mar, were also flattened by the devastating tremors, but AFP made no effort to provide that context.

The New York Times (7/5/26) likewise attempted to besmirch what is one of the most ambitious public housing projects worldwide by repeating the unfounded claim that homes were assigned as a “reward for loyalty to Mr. Chávez.” However, the paper of record at least admitted that “Misión Vivienda buildings are far from the only apartments to have fallen.”

The Wall Street Journal (6/28/26) could not hide its elitism in describing how Chávez “rushed to provide apartments to the poor” in a town “beloved by the rich,” with a golf course and a “marina for yachts.” It went further by promoting a social media hoax that styrofoam found in damaged buildings meant that the housing mission used absurdly unsuitable materials in its construction. In reality, expanded polystyrene (EPS) foam is widely used to lighten the load on structures and for thermal insulation, a key factor in such a hot climate.

Venezuelan officials have called for a review of the collapsed structures and building codes, though they have claimed that the public housing buildings fared better than their privately constructed neighbors.

There is little evidence to suggest that GMVV buildings suffered a worse fate than their private sector counterparts. According to the open-source tool Terremoto Venezuela, only 11 out of 258 buildings reported as collapsed (“daño total”) belong to the housing mission.

The definitive figures will need to be put in perspective to see whether affected buildings and non-complicity with existing codes were prevalent in the GMVV developments or the recent tourist-driven real estate boom in La Guaira. But the media establishment immediately jumped to its politically motivated verdict before any thorough investigation had been conducted.

Whitewashing sanctions

While multiple outlets stressed that it is necessary to scrutinize whether authorities enforced the appropriate regulations in what is known to be vulnerable terrain (France 24, 6/29/26; Reuters, 6/29/26), no evaluation of the Venezuelan state’s record is accurate if it ignores the wide-reaching sanctions regime imposed by Washington.

Yet many Western journalists completely overlooked sanctions in their coverage of the earthquakes and the Venezuelan state’s capacity to respond to a natural catastrophe.

Corporate outlets like the Financial Times (6/28/26) wasted no time in proclaiming that the “legacy of ‘Chavismo’ hinder[ed] Venezuela’s earthquake response,” while AP (7/3/26) decreed that the government’s response was “slow” and the BBC (6/29/26) claimed survivors were “left to fend for themselves.”

None saw fit to even mention that Venezuela has been under economic coercive measures for years. NBC (6/25/26) avoided the kneejerk verdicts and offered lots of testimony on the natural disaster, but when concluding that “Venezuela already faced economic challenges and poverty,” chose not to name sanctions as a key economic challenge and poverty factor.

In other reports, the whitewashing of sanctions was more subtle. The Guardian (7/3/26) attributed the government’s “sluggish response” to “years of corruption, economic mismanagement and investment in political repression and domestic security rather than emergency services and healthcare.” As almost an afterthought, it added that sanctions “have further enfeebled the Venezuelan state.” The Washington Post‘s anti-public housing article (6/27/26) called Venezuela’s economic collapse “the result of mismanagement by the socialist government exacerbated by US-imposed economic sanctions.”

The New York Times (7/4/26) wrote that “Venezuela’s fragile infrastructure—including rail, electricity and healthcare systems that have suffered from years of corruption and mismanagement.” In a later section it added, “Venezuela is reeling from years of economic turmoil and crippling US sanctions.”

Over the years, Western media have pulled all the stops to legitimize Washington’s hybrid war on Caracas and conceal the murderous impact of sanctions (FAIR.org, 6/4/21, 6/13/22). There is no shortage of documentation on how these coercive measures represented collective punishment (CEPR, 4/25/19). In an extensive 2021 report, UN rapporteur Alena Douhan thoroughly discussed the impact of sanctions on Venezuelan public services and infrastructure.

The current framing  of earthquake coverage aims to separate US sanctions as much as possible from their direct consequences. Rail, electricity and healthcare systems became much more “fragile” because sanctions blocked the Venezuelan government from servicing equipment and importing spare parts, not to mention brain drain resulting from mass migration of qualified personnel largely trained in public universities. Similarly, the “economic turmoil” is a result of US sanctions, not a parallel phenomenon.

Indeed, economist Francisco Rodríguez, senior research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, dismisses arguments that the bulk of Venezuela’s economic decline preceded sanctions (CEPR, 5/19/26). Instead, the rate of GDP contraction nearly quadrupled following the US imposition of unilateral coercive measures in 2017.

And the need to conjure elaborate intermediation schemes in order to circumvent sanctions opened more avenues for corruption. To present the latter as an issue that uniquely and disproportionately plagues a government facing an economic blockade is disingenuous, to say the least.

Ignoring the semi-colonial straitjacket

In their recent coverage, most corporate media sources were quick to decree that the Venezuelan government’s response was “slow” (Financial Times, 6/27/26; Guardian, 6/29/26), “inadequate” (Reuters, 7/5/26), “faltering” (AP, 7/1/26) or “completely ineffective” (PBS, 7/2/26).

It is understandable that ordinary people would not sing the government’s praises after losing a relative or while looking for one trapped under rubble. But journalists have a responsibility to add context. In this case, a significant mitigating circumstance is that the tremors heavily hit the local authorities, which run civil protection and other services.

Acting President Delcy Rodríguez stated that nearly all the directors from the La Guaira regional government were lost in the tragedy. Coupled with a collapse of communications, this added more hurdles for response efforts.

Another overlooked element is just how rare and deadly this double earthquake was. The New York Times was a notable exception, with a thorough piece (7/3/26) explaining how the disaster unfolded and why it caused so much destruction.

But the most relevant element to understand Venezuela’s present constraints is, once again, the role played by the US government. Just like with sanctions, corporate news outlets whitewashed Washington’s current semi-colonial impositions on the South American nation.

Since the January 3 attacks, the Trump administration has seized control of Venezuelan export revenues, particularly from oil sales (Venezuelanalysis, 2/20/26). Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that the Venezuelan government would need to submit a “budget request” to access its own funds held by the US Treasury (Venezuelanalysis, 1/29/26). Neither US nor Venezuelan authorities have offered any transparent information on the amounts collected and disbursed, including Washington’s intermediation fees.

Trump is not known for precision in his statements, but he has not been shy in boasting that the cost of the January 3 military operation has been paid “many times over” from oil profits (New York Times, 6/29/26; Guardian, 6/28/26; Al Jazeera, 6/24/26). While there is no information to verify the claims, economist Francisco Rodríguez, analyzing Venezuelan Central Bank data, concluded that there is at least a significant delay in the US disbursement of Venezuelan funds back to the country (Banca y Negocios, 6/22/26). The suspicious lack of transparency has even drawn questions from traditional foreign policy paladins like the Council on Foreign Relations.

With few exceptions (Reuters, 7/1/26; AP, 7/3/26; New York Times, 7/6/26), this key, semi-colonial constraint on the Venezuelan state is completely overlooked. Even worse, some outlets mistakenly stated that the White House has “lifted” or  authorized “relaxation” of sanctions (PBS, 7/2/26; Financial Times, 6/27/26). Actually it has only issued licenses for select Western corporations, and with the condition that proceeds be deposited in the US Treasury account. Following the recent natural disaster, the Trump administration issued a four-month waiver allowing earthquake relief-related transactions, but left all restrictions and asset freezes in place (Venezuelanalysis, 6/26/26).

Another ominous development has been the US forces’ takeover of operations at the Simón Bolívar International Airport, the country’s main air hub, and the La Guaira port. Despite regular Southern Command press releases, and even photographic evidence, the media establishment has paid little attention to this serious (further) encroachment on Venezuelan sovereignty.

The outlook is bleak for Venezuela, with this tragedy likely to increase dependency and semi-colonial plundering. But there is room for hope. The limits of US power are being exposed all over the world, and resorting to more and more violence will not stem this inevitable decline. Peoples in the Global South, including in Venezuela, will eventually (re)take control of their destinies. But they know that the corporate press barons are no allies in this struggle.

Source: FAIR

Volunteers in La Guaira have transformed a fast-food restaurant into an emergency clinic since hospitals were damaged or destroyed by Venezuela’s earthquakes.

Regional health agency warns of increased risk of a disease outbreak after Venezuela’s twin earthquakes

Venezuela’s authorities say the death toll from twin earthquakes last month has risen to 3,889, as regional health agencies warn of an increased risk of disease.

Lawmaker Jorge Rodrigues said on Thursday at least 16,740 people had been injured and 17,907 displaced.

The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) warned that displaced people across Venezuela’s northern coast, the area most affected by the tremors, are at risk of disease because of limited access to clean water and regular medical care.

“In the coming weeks, the greatest health risks may stem not only from injuries caused by the earthquakes, but also from disruptions to health services, overcrowded conditions, deficiencies in water and sanitation and reduced access to vaccination and routine healthcare,” PAHO’s director Jarbas Barbosa said.

The agency is working with Venezuela’s health ⁠ministry to improve vaccine access and trace any outbreaks of respiratory or digestive illnesses, especially in shelters set up for those who lost their homes.

The United Nations launched an appeal for roughly $300 million to assist 1.3 million people in urgent need of aid in Venezuela.

PAHO urged immediate disbursement of the remaining $15 million in requested emergency aid to repair damaged hospitals and to maintain basic sanitation in camps for the displaced to prevent a health emergency.

International aid teams have played a key part in Venezuela’s ‘miracle rescues’, days after twin earthquakes struck, but now they’re preparing to leave. Thousands of people are still searching for their relatives amid the rubble, as frustration continues to build towards the government response.

A sports stadium in La Guaira state has been turned into a makeshift home and logistics centre for thousands of victims of the Venezuela earthquakes. As Al Jazeera’s Zein Basravi reports aid organizations are planning to make this a model for other shelters.