Venezuela’s official death toll from the June 24 earthquakes has risen to 3,342 as of Monday morning, with 16,740 people injured, National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez said in a government update Sunday. Officials said 6,462 people have been rescued, while 17,345 residents have lost their homes and are being sheltered in 79 temporary camps across the country.
Officials have not released an updated missing-persons count alongside the latest toll. An earlier government estimate put the number of unaccounted-for residents at more than 41,000, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica’s rolling account of the disaster. Outside observers have questioned the reliability of the government’s overall casualty figures; a forensic pathologist working in La Guaira told CNN she believes the official death toll represents “not even a third of what is actually there,” though the government disputes that characterization. A crowdsourced database called Venezuela Reporta has attempted to independently track missing persons since the earthquakes struck, though its figures have not been independently verified.
The twin earthquakes, which struck with magnitudes of 7.2 and 7.5, hit their epicenters in Veroes Municipality, west of San Felipe in Yaracuy state, and caused widespread damage across the country, particularly in La Guaira and Caracas. The disaster was Venezuela’s strongest earthquake since the 1900 San Narciso earthquake.
Eleven days after the disaster, the emergency response is entering a new phase. Most international rescue teams have withdrawn, leaving Venezuelan firefighters, civil defense crews, volunteers and local residents to continue recovery efforts, according to the government’s latest figures, which also counted nearly 29,600 military and security personnel and more than 27,000 volunteers still involved in relief operations.
The scale of destruction is becoming clearer as search efforts wind down. Officials reported 856 damaged buildings, including 190 that collapsed, and said nearly 86,800 families have received assistance since the disaster.
Reconstruction costs are now coming into focus. Venezuelan human rights organization PROVEA estimated that losses and rebuilding costs from the earthquakes could reach approximately $37 billion, or roughly 40% of the country’s current gross domestic product. That builds on an earlier assessment from the United Nations Development Programme, which put the cost of physical damage at $6.7 billion based on satellite imagery.
International aid has continued to arrive even as needs mount. The World Food Programme has appealed for $50 million to feed roughly 500,000 people for three months, while the United States has pledged $300 million, according to the Department of State.
Humanitarian workers warn the crisis is far from over. Venezuela’s health system, already strained for years by shortages of medical equipment, trained staff and reliable electrical power, faces a heightened risk of a broader health crisis in the earthquakes’ aftermath. That warning is bearing out in Caracas, where hospitals are again reporting shortages of medicine and supplies as donations run out, according to an investigation by journalists Víctor Amaya and Lucía Ramírez for TalCual.
The disaster has also taken on political weight. Johns Hopkins international relations analyst Cynthia Arnson said the earthquakes could expose the government’s inability to provide basic needs, which could complicate the country’s path toward a democratic transition. Venezuelan officials have pushed back on criticism of the response; National Assembly President Rodríguez dismissed such critiques as “narratives manufactured in propaganda laboratories.”
Pope Leo XIV offered prayers for Venezuela on Sunday, telling a choir visiting the Vatican that he remembers the earthquake’s victims in his prayers.
