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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.

Gaza Health Ministry says hospitals receive bodies of two Palestinians as Netanyahu rejects Trump plan to end war.

Israeli attacks on Gaza have killed at least one person as Palestinian health authorities have confirmed another death after a body was recovered from beneath the rubble in the war-shattered enclave.

Israeli forces shot and killed one Palestinian east of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza on Saturday, the Qatar News Agency (QNA) reported, quoting medical sources.

The Gaza Ministry of Health confirmed on Sunday that hospitals had received the bodies of two Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks, including one recovered from the rubble.

At least five people, including children, were wounded in Israeli attacks in the southern cities of Khan Younis and Rafah on Saturday, QNA reported.

Local sources said several people were wounded when an Israeli tank opened fire on tents sheltering displaced people in Khan Younis. Among them was a woman who was critically wounded. A girl was seriously wounded by Israeli army fire in the al-Mawasi coastal area of Rafah.

Israeli artillery also shelled areas east of Khan Younis, and Israeli fire wounded several more people in the al-Mahatta area of Gaza City’s Tuffah neighbourhood.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said the overall death toll since Israel launched its genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza in October 2023 was 73,386 with 174,250 wounded.

The remains of many people killed in Israeli attacks are still buried under rubble, and those deaths are uncounted, the ministry added. Ambulance and Palestinian Civil Defence crews remain unable to reach them.

Since a “ceasefire” took effect in October, the Health Ministry has recorded 1,258 people killed by Israel, 4,139 wounded and 807 bodies recovered from the rubble of destroyed buildings.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that Israel has rejected United States President Donald Trump’s 15-point plan for Gaza, telling a cabinet meeting that Israeli forces “will not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is genuinely disarmed”.

The rejection follows a similar position taken last week by the US-led Board of Peace, which said an Israeli withdrawal would only proceed once Hamas’s disarmament is complete, leaving both the ceasefire’s terms and any timeline for Israel’s exit from Gaza unresolved even as casualties continue to mount.

The country that in 2008 heard then-President Hugo Chávez say, “Go to hell,  damn Yankees,” as he expelled the U.S. ambassador, today watches hundreds of U.S. soldiers patrol the streets of La Guaira, which was devastated by the two earthquakes a month ago. The soldiers distribute meager humanitarian aid in small boxes bearing U.S. flag stickers while filming for publicity spots.

The U.S. has promised $386 million to help Venezuela recover, but it and its allies continue to hold more than $22 billion in frozen Venezuelan assets. Washington’s actions demonstrate, once again, that its priority is oil, not the well-being of Venezuelans. Meanwhile, U.S. real estate developers are also visiting La Guaira, treating the devastation as yet another business opportunity.

Whole areas lie in ruins in La Guaira, where 82-year old Erminia Hernández lives. She was born in La Guaira, the coastal gateway to Venezuela that hosts the country’s main airport, and where residents of nearby Caracas go to sunbathe. She says she remembers the many tragedies that have struck this area, having lived through the 1967 earthquake, the Vargas mudslide in 1999, and the COVID-19 pandemic. However, she doesn’t remember anything as devastating as the double earthquakes of June 24. 

The 1967 quake stopped her as she was making majarete, a typical Caribbean dessert, she says. But last month’s earthquakes knocked her and her sister flat to the ground, face down in the hallway of their house, where she then knelt to pray as everything rocked violently. She says she does not remember who helped her stand up, but she is certain she will never forget the moment she thought she was about to die. 

“The 1967 earthquake was nothing compared to this,” Hernández tells Truthdig. “And during the mudslide, I only heard about one neighbor who died. But now, every day I learn about someone I know who has died or is missing. In my immediate family alone, we lost six people, and two more are hospitalized.”

She is right. In 1967, fewer than 300 people died. After the mudslide, some sources put the death toll at 700, with thousands more missing. The coronavirus claimed 5,856 lives across the entire country over several years. But these earthquakes have killed more than 5,270 people, left 16,700 injured and 18,000 displaced. The numbers rise daily. The government puts the number of rescued at 7,000 but does not mention how many are still missing. 

Jofram Gallipoli, his wife Oriana and their 4-year-old son Luciano were among those rescued. Seven floors collapsed on top of them in the Tanaguarenas neighborhood of La Guaira. They are alive today because Jofram’s father, José Alberto Gallipoli, owns a hardware store in Caracas, where he gathered crowbars, chisels, picks, a cordless drill, hacksaws and gloves so that relatives, friends, neighbors and police officers — none of them equipped with specialized rescue machinery — could dig a tunnel through the rubble.

During the 27 hours that the rescue took, Jofram Gallipoli tells Truthdig he communicated with the outside by banging an air conditioning grate with a ceramic tile every time he heard his name. 

“When we were under the rubble, we thought only our building had collapsed. Coming out was a shock. We lost all our material possessions, but we are alive, and I, who have emigrated before, want to stay here this time,” Jofram Gallipoli says.

According to official figures, nearly 200 buildings collapsed entirely and at least 900 were severely damaged. Structural engineers are now conducting inspections on thousands of homes in the seven states affected by the earthquakes. For Jofram’s father, “the physical structures fell, but we, the true architects of life, are ready to rebuild, from scratch, on a stronger foundation.”

José Alberto’s words are hopeful, but how much will this reconstruction actually cost? How will we carry it out? What intentions lie behind much of the “humanitarian aid” that countries like the U.S. are sending?

What is needed now

Preliminary assessments from the U.N. Development Program estimate direct physical damages at $6.7 billion, a figure that focuses on housing and does not include the full extent of infrastructure damage or the cost of long-term reconstruction.

The U.N. Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, meanwhile, puts the full reconstruction cost at $37 billion: $24 billion for lost buildings — homes, schools, stores and hospitals — and $13 billion for damage to critical infrastructure such as roads and power grids. That represents nearly one-third of Venezuela’s current gross domestic product.

For now, however, the country that has promised the most economic “aid” to Venezuela is the United States, with its much-publicized $386 million.

But if the Trump administration released the Venezuelan funds it continues to block via sanctions, the country would not need these handouts: 31 tons of gold — valued at roughly $4.2 billion — remain frozen in London. The international financial system, including private banks and multilateral organizations, has blocked more than $22 billion in Venezuelan assets. At the same time, Venezuelan oil revenue is now deposited into an account at the U.S. Treasury. “We … control the dispersal of the money,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in January.

Washington’s double standards

One day after the double earthquake, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control issued General License 60, which authorizes transactions related to humanitarian assistance in Venezuela but does not include the unfreezing of assets subject to sanctions or “any other transactions or activities prohibited by any other Executive Order.”

The United States acts this way because the architecture of punitive sanctions against Venezuela is the “legal foundation” for control over the Venezuelan oil industry, says William Serafino, a political scientist from the Central University of Venezuela. In 2017, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on Venezuela that prohibited access to U.S. financial markets, and in 2018, expanded them to block purchasing of Venezuelan debt.

“With the issuance of licenses, Washington is able to modify certain aspects of its economic and financial coercion policy, always in the interest of U.S. companies, but without altering the overall sanctions framework,” Serafino tells Truthdig. “The sanctions are what guarantees U.S. appropriation of Venezuelan resources at a clear disadvantage to Venezuela.” 

These licenses are official documents issued by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control that allow American individuals and companies, or those with U.S. ties, to carry out very specific and limited transactions with the Venezuelan state or the state oil company PDVSA. 

Serafino says that such exemptions and the small amount of funds provided after the earthquakes are intended to “whitewash this illegal sanctions policy” in order to undermine the broad consensus across Venezuelan society in favor of lifting all measures that hinder the normal development of Venezuela’s economy. 

The U.S. has similarly just provided $100 million in aid to Cuba, after sanctioning the country since 1962. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says the sanctions violate international law — which U.N. human rights experts say could also be true of the Venezuela sanctions. U.N. human rights experts describe the latest trade tariffs that block oil from getting to Cuba as “an extreme form of unilateral economic coercion” that violates self determination.

Venezuelans aren’t the only ones rejecting the U.S. sanctions against their country. After the earthquakes, 13 prominent economists, including Isabella Weber, Jeffrey Sachs and James K. Galbraith, signed a letter calling for the lifting of sanctions. Likewise, the U.N.’s humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, warned that such coercive measures directly affect the delivery of aid and recovery plans.

“Fletcher’s statement shows that temporary exemptions are insufficient,” Serafino says, “Financial institutions, even when they theoretically have ‘permission’ from the Treasury Department to operate, are very cautious about expediting transactions related to supplies, donations and the transfer of aid funds between multilateral institutions and humanitarian organizations, due to fear of penalties and fines.”

Transactions that under normal circumstances “would take a few days,” he says, are subjected to a bureaucratic morass because of the sanctions, because “banks must constantly consult their legal departments and steer clear of red lines.”

At the same time, the United States is also using the tragedy to ramp up its military intervention in Venezuela through a “humanitarian support” operation coordinated by the U.S. Southern Command and the State Department, under the Department of Defense. That has included moving the warships USS Fort Lauderdale and USS Billings toward the coast of La Guaira, flying helicopters over devastated areas and deploying surveillance drones such as the MQ-9 Reaper.

“It is extremely serious that, taking advantage of a tragedy and under the pretext of humanitarian aid, the United States has not only taken over the country’s main airport and seaport but also deployed 900 Marines in La Guaira and 2,000 across the entire operation,” former Vice President Elias Jaua, who also held multiple Cabinet posts during the Chavez government, tells Truthdig. 

“Moreover, we have seen the mapping they have done of the entire Venezuelan coastline with drones and helicopters. This is another escalation in the military occupation,” he says, adding that the deployment also imposes strict military monitoring and de facto control over Venezuela’s skies and coastline from U.S. bases in Puerto Rico, Panama and Trinidad and Tobago.

Jaua, who now works as a university professor, says the measures openly violate Article 13 of Venezuela’s Constitution, which bars foreign military bases or installations with military purposes by any country or coalition of countries in Venezuelan maritime, air and land territory.

Asked what will happen to the U.S. military presence in Venezuelan territory once the emergency ends, Jaua only comments that “a civic, political and grassroots movement must be built to defend Venezuela’s right to remain a republic. Otherwise, it will end up as a North American [i.e. U.S.] colony annexed to the United States or a protectorate administered from the north.”

Serafino, on the other hand, questions why Washington would want to flood Venezuela with Marines and other military forces when it has already managed to gain control over the country’s resources without a large and sustained presence since Jan. 3, when it launched airstrikes on the country and seized the president.

“It seems like an unnecessary and politically contentious measure, especially with U.S. midterm elections around the corner and a strong chance [President Donald] Trump could lose them,” Serafino says. 

“I think the military presence will be limited to solidifying U.S. influence over oil and other strategic resources, mapping migration flows from the air and conducting permanent flyovers and naval patrols to signal to Russia and China that both Venezuela and the Caribbean Basin fall under Trump’s purview.”

Economic interests

But U.S. interests in Venezuela go beyond the military. Global Empowerment Mission (GEM), a company led by Miami luxury homebuilder Michael Capponi, along with other real estate developers and a network of corporate interests with ties to Trump, are already seeing the earthquakes’ devastation as a business opportunity.

While the State Department has announced that it is working with U.S. corporations including Walmart and Amazon to bolster the “humanitarian” response in Venezuela, Serafino views GEM’s presence as more important and “pervasive.” He does not rule out that Pentagon-affiliated contractors could become involved in projects to refurbish Maiquetia International Airport, the Port of La Guaira and the management of shelters.

Recent precedents such as Iraq after the 2003 U.S. invasion and Haiti after the 2010 earthquake saw Beltway contractors — defense, technology and consulting firms based in Washington, D.C. — securing big business opportunities. In Iraq, they obtained lucrative reconstruction contracts. In Haiti, the pattern repeated through the privatization of security, logistics management and international aid programs.

This aligns with complaints from social activists in La Guaira including José Félix Valera, who tells Truthdig that some contractors, mainly U.S. ones, are already demolishing and clearing land where people are still trying to recover the bodies of their relatives. 

“There have been serious confrontations because people want to recover the bodies,” Valera says. “I saw people stop a building from being demolished, and three days later they found a young man alive. Still, the contractors with machinery take advantage of the early morning hours to demolish.” 

While a desire to rebuild quickly is understandable, Valera, who apart from his activism is also a leader at community radio station Voces in La Guaira, believes other interests are at play. The demolishing is taking place at “the largest flat plots [of land] facing the Caribbean Sea in the region, and that has a lot of implications from a geopolitical standpoint but also for tourism,” he says. “For example, this is one of the best places for international events like Grand Slam tournaments or deep-sea fishing.”

“But the U.S. is also interested in the real estate possibilities,” he says.

Valera also wonders why there are so many U.S. troops in La Guaira. “Two thousand arrived, of which only 300 are rescue workers — the other 1,700 are soldiers, and at the moment they are guarding these demolition operations.”

The U.S. did not come to Venezuela alone; Israeli officials from the Israel Defense Forces’ Home Front Command are also coordinating the supposed recovery of 14 sectors of La Guaira. In fact, they have already delivered a six-phase plan for the state’s recovery to the Venezuelan government. All of this comes despite Venezuela having broken diplomatic relations with Israel 17 years ago. Over those nearly two decades, Venezuelan officials have frequently issued harsh criticism and accusations against Tel Aviv over its genocidal actions in Palestine and the region.

Yet today, the same army that has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians since 2023 is now in Venezuela, claiming to want to help recover the bodies of our dead and rebuild our homes. Many Venezuelans are deeply distrustful and worried about what such “humanitarian aid” will mean for them in coming months.

“The future of La Guaira and the practical debate over the use of this land must involve the people of La Guaira, because this is our land and our economic livelihood,” Valera says.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Venezuelanalysis editorial staff.

Source: Truthdig

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.

At first, Jesus did not believe it was possible, but then he heard his father shouting out from the rubble, saying: “Don’t leave me here.”

“I said, ‘Trust me: Stay calm. Keep the kids calm over there. I’m not leaving here without you,'” Jesus recalled.

Jose had been trapped for more than an hour by that point, unsure of his fate. He and his two younger sons had survived the collapse with relatively minor injuries, but dangers remained. The debris could still shift and crush them.

“The first thing I thought of was my children. I had the little one right here,” Jose recalled, lifting his hands to his chest. “And I still had the other one. He was right next to me but buried. I couldn’t see his face; I could only see one foot and one hand.”

Still, Jose put on a brave face for his boys. A friendly voice had pierced the rubble: Jesus’s friend, the firefighter.

He had been shouting for survivors. He had also brought Jesus’s old firefighting equipment to the site.

After finding out his father and brothers were alive, Jesus began desperately trying to get them out. But he realised he would have to wait until the next day for the sun to come up and, crucially, to get his hands on a jackhammer that could drill through the floors of rubble separating him from his family.

Finally, the next morning, a specialist squad from the police arrived with the gear they needed to carry out the rescue.

With the help of his firefighting team from La Guaira, who showed up to help their old comrade, Jesus was able to pull his father and two younger brothers from the rubble at about 3:30pm on June 25, more than 20 hours after the earthquakes.

He quickly swept Diego and Santiago into his arms.

“When I saw them, I hugged them, gave them a kiss, and said, ‘I love you, brother,'” Jesus recalled. “Then I stepped away for a moment and started crying.”

Jose is still shaken from the experience, which has changed his life forever. “I am someone who will be grateful for the rest of my life that I was given this opportunity. Not just me, but my two young children.”

She said she and 31-year-old Ana Luz were extremely close and would talk every day on video calls. Her sister always had Kleiber by her side.

“Wherever she went, her son went too. Whatever Kleiber wanted, she would please him. If she didn’t have money, she would call me: ‘Kleiber wants this’ or ‘he’s missing this,'” Andreína said.

“She is my older sister and I always trusted her and could tell her my problems and whenever I spoke to her on a video call, the child was by her side.”

Andreína said she was certain that her sister would have been next to Kleiber in the rubble.

As she sat with her nephew in hospital, desperate search and rescue efforts were continuing after the earthquakes.

Some 2,295 deaths have been officially recorded, but the final toll is expected to be many times higher. Tens of thousands have been reported missing, and the United Nations has said it is procuring 10,000 body bags for the country.

Andreína said she had not lost hope that Kleiber’s parents would be rescued.

“Just as they found my nephew, I have faith that they are going to find my sister and my brother-in-law,” she said.

Looking affectionately at Kleiber, she said she believed “he has a purpose in the world”.

“When this child grows up, God willing, this will be his story,” she said.

Additional reporting by Euridice Ledezma

Rescue teams in Greece are combing through the rubble for survivors after a four-story apartment building in Athens collapsed on Tuesday. Four people have since been rescued from beneath the debris. Authorities are still investigating the cause of the collapse.

This is the moment rescuers pulled a newborn baby from beneath the rubble of a collapsed building, after two deadly earthquakes hit Venezuela.

Videos shared on social media show rescuers in the city of La Guaira moving the baby away from the rubble and handing it over to a man, who appears to be the father. The mother was also pulled alive from the rubble a while later, AFP reports.

Rescue efforts are continuing in the country, after back-to-back quakes struck the country, killing at least 920 people and injuring more than 3,360.

More on this story.