Two shallow earthquakes of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 struck central Venezuela within a minute of each other on the night of 24 June, collapsing buildings, severing power lines and killing at least 164 people, according to interim president Delcy Rodríguez. The epicentres were located near the towns of Morón and San Felipe in Carabobo state, roughly 300 kilometres east of the capital Caracas, and the tremors were felt as far away as Colombia. Venezuelan authorities declared a state of emergency and reported 971 injured, though some official channels later cited 188 dead and more than 1,500 wounded.

The coastal state of La Guaira was designated a “catastrophic zone” by the government. Local church officials described a landscape of structural ruin: the bishop of La Guaira, Pablo Modesto González Pérez, said the seminary had lost many walls and the region was without electricity. The archbishop of Caracas, Raúl Biord Castillo, reported that the capital’s cathedral and at least a dozen other churches sustained severe damage, while many parishes had opened their doors to shelter families who lost their homes. The Caracas airport was damaged and temporarily closed, and metro and rail services were suspended.

From the Vatican, Pope Leo XIV channelled an initial €100,000 through the Apostolic Almoner to the Venezuelan church for emergency relief. Caritas Internationalis matched that sum, coordinating with Caritas Venezuela and a network of some 30,000 volunteers. The United States, France, Spain, Germany, Brazil, Mexico, Cuba, Iran and the European Union were among the governments that publicly offered search-and-rescue teams, medical supplies or military transport aircraft. Russia and Brazil said they had not yet received a formal request for assistance from Caracas but stood ready to respond.

The official death toll remains provisional and is sharply contested by scientific modelling. The US Geological Survey’s PAGER system issued a preliminary estimate of 10,000 to 100,000 potential fatalities, with economic losses possibly reaching 1–7 per cent of Venezuela’s GDP. Archbishop Biord Castillo noted that the human cost could have been far worse had the quakes not occurred on a public holiday, when schools and offices were closed. Rescue teams continued to search for survivors trapped in collapsed structures, including an eight-storey hotel that crumbled in La Guaira.

Venezuela was already grappling with a prolonged economic crisis before the disaster. The Financial Times reported that the government is preparing to unveil a public debt total of roughly $240 billion in the coming weeks, aiming to restructure obligations and re-enter international markets after nearly a decade of financial isolation. The earthquakes, the strongest to hit the country in more than 120 years, add a layer of humanitarian urgency to that fragile recovery effort.