Venezuela Earthquake Survivors Recount Ordeal as Rescue Efforts Lose Momentum

Updated by Faith Barbara N Ruhinda at 1312 EAT on Monday 29 June 2026

A survivor of the earthquakes that have devastated parts of Venezuela has criticised what he says is a lack of government support for efforts to rescue people still trapped beneath rubble.

The unidentified man, who was also searching for missing relatives, told Reuters in La Guaira: “We want support; we want heavy machinery.”

“We want to take our family members with us. I’m not the only one in this situation. They’re almost not going to let us in here anymore. They haven’t helped us clear the rubble,” he said.

He said about 300 people had been inside the building he has been searching, adding that only around 80 people have so far been recovered, either alive or dead.

“We have no choice; we don’t have help,” he added.

Outside José María Vargas Hospital in La Guaira, a sense of desperation hangs over the entrance as dozens of people search for relatives missing after Wednesday’s double earthquake. Health authorities have posted a list of hospitalised patients in an effort to assist families.

Anxious faces scan the names in silence, suspended between fear and hope.

A few metres away, Ali Rodríguez, a 50-year-old motorcycle taxi driver, said he was trapped for eight hours under the rubble of a supermarket before being rescued.

“When the shaking started, I tried to run with my wife, but we were dragged back inside. We ended up buried together, chest to chest, with a sheet of zinc through us. There was a child next to me… he died. An eight-year-old boy,” he said, his voice shaking.

“We were saved by looters [who came into the supermarket where we were trapped] — they were the ones who gave us this second chance,” he said, criticising what he described as a slow official response.

The couple’s 10-year-old son had stayed at home while they went shopping. He has had no news of him since and has refused to leave the hospital, hoping his child will be brought there.

His wife has been transferred to a hospital in Caracas, but Rodríguez said he intends to remain at the site until his son is found.

“I think he’s alive, but I’m afraid he thinks we’re dead… I’m sure he must be looking for me,” he said.

A woman from Caracas has described watching her apartment collapse around her during the magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 earthquakes that struck Venezuela last Wednesday.

Susana Saavedra told Reuters she had just stepped out of her bedroom when the first quake hit, a decision she said likely saved her life.

“Right then, the shaking started. I stood under the pillar and watched as the kitchen and the bedroom collapsed around me. Everything just kept collapsing—everything,” she said.

The rear of Saavedra’s building has been completely destroyed, Reuters reported, with six bodies recovered from the structure.

“I feel very sad because of the loss of our neighbours. At least I was lucky enough to save my own life. But our neighbours—young people, full of life—were left in the rubble,” she said.

“I imagine that if I hadn’t left my room, I, too, would have been in that rubble and wouldn’t have survived.”

A mother pulled from the rubble of her wrecked home in Venezuela alongside her 18-day-old baby has told the BBC how her newborn son helped keep her alive.
Dayana Patiño was in her eighth-floor apartment with her son, Juan David, in the northern coastal region of La Guaira when the earthquakes struck.

She said she immediately tried to cradle her baby, but then felt as though she was “flying”, adding: “I felt like I was sinking in water and dirt, and then I fell into the pit where I remained.”

“I don’t know how I didn’t let go of my baby because I was flying. I got crushed against furniture,” she said.

The pair remained trapped under the rubble until her screams alerted rescuers, who were able to extract them on Thursday night.

“As long as he was alive, I was going to be alive. Every now and then I was touching his nose to make sure he was still breathing,” she said.

Footage of the rescue has circulated widely, with Juan David becoming a symbol of hope in Venezuela, which has been devastated by the twin earthquakes that struck on Wednesday and killed at least 1,450 people.

In the past few days, children have been pulled alive from the rubble and reunited with waiting parents, alongside parents rescued with their children and, in one case, an eight-month-old baby brought out alive.
These moments have provided brief but powerful lifts to national morale, as well as to exhausted rescue teams who have achieved the rescues.

But with each passing hour, rescuers say the chances of such survivals are growing increasingly slim.

It has been an especially difficult period for search teams over the past 24 hours. Early optimism in the first days of the disaster has given way to fading hope as rescue efforts continue.

For most of the past day, in Catia La Mar on Venezuela’s devastated northern coastline, rescue teams have largely been recovering bodies. The work has been grim, with families still waiting nearby for news but increasingly aware that the chances of finding survivors are now remote.

María Corina Machado has said “the time has come” for her to return to Venezuela.
The opposition leader left the country in a covert operation in December 2025 after living in hiding following widely disputed elections in 2024.

“It is my duty to accompany my people. We need to be together to embrace, to grieve and mourn together,” she told Fox & Friends.

“The absolute priority is saving lives and consoling and helping those who have been harmed. I will very soon be back in Venezuela together with the Venezuelan people,” Machado added.

-BBC

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