Two earthquakes of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 struck northern Venezuela on 24 June, killing at least 5,398 people and injuring 16,740, according to authorities in Caracas. The tremors, separated by just 39 seconds, levelled hundreds of buildings in the coastal state of La Guaira and the capital district, leaving an estimated 23,000 people homeless.

From Washington, the World Bank released a preliminary assessment putting direct physical damage at $19.6 billion—roughly 18 per cent of the country’s GDP—with residential buildings accounting for nearly half the loss. The estimate, which the Bank notes does not include the higher costs of building to modern safety standards, is far below the United Nations’ earlier figure of $37 billion. La Guaira and the Caracas metropolitan area bore roughly 47 per cent of the destruction, with over 900 schools and 38 hospitals damaged across nine states.

While the government has updated its fatality count repeatedly—rising from fewer than 600 in the first days—it has declined to publish a number for those still unaccounted for, calling such figures speculation. Independent citizen-led registries, however, list between 29,000 and 40,000 missing persons, and UN field officers have warned the real number could be as high as 50,000. Authorities acknowledge that hundreds of recovered bodies remain unidentified, and families describe weeks of searching morgues and rubble with little state support.

Reconstruction will require a massive infusion of public and private capital, the World Bank warned, otherwise efforts will take more than a decade and leave economic output depressed through 2036. The interim government, installed after the ousting of Nicolás Maduro in January, has pledged to deliver 4,000 new homes by the end of the year and adopted legislative reforms to speed construction, while the International Monetary Fund has released $346 million from Venezuelan reserves for emergency relief. However, the country remains isolated from conventional multilateral lending and heavily reliant on oil revenues now overseen by the United States.

Nearly a month on, search operations have transitioned from rescue to debris removal, though local volunteers and international teams continue to recover bodies. Unofficial reports of possible survivors trapped in collapsed buildings in La Guaira circulated this week, but the civil protection agency dismissed them as false and urged the public to rely only on official announcements. The toll, officials caution, is likely to rise further as work continues.