At 18:04 on Thursday 24 June, two earthquakes struck north-central Venezuela 39 seconds apart. Measuring 7.2 and 7.5 in magnitude, they were felt across Caracas, Carabobo, La Guaira, Miranda and Aragua. The second was the strongest to hit the country in more than a century.
Thousands have been confirmed dead. UNICEF estimates that 1.8 million people need humanitarian assistance, including 680,000 children. In coastal towns like Catia La Mar and Caraballeda, where housing is dense and much of it decades old, whole blocks came down. In parts of Catia La Mar, around 70% of local shops and services are now rubble.
For many in La Guaira, this is not the first time the coast has been rebuilt from nothing. The 1999 Vargas landslide struck the same stretch of coastline. Some of those now clearing rubble were children then, and are adults doing it again now.
Our partners are already responding. Your support helps them go further, faster.
'As a mother, I resigned myself'
Mildred Hernández de Betancourt, 39, was out on the street with her daughter when the shaking started. Her three children, aged 16, 13 and 10, were at home on the fourteenth floor of their building.
'I was mostly watching the utility poles and trying to shield my daughter so those high-voltage cables wouldn't fall on us,' she says. 'My husband was protecting us because the walls, the houses, were practically collapsing.'
When the dust rose, she could not see her building. 'Honestly, as a mother, I resigned myself and told my husband: "My love, look, our children are gone, because I can't see the building."'
Then a breeze cleared the dust. Her husband went back up and brought all three children out. They were the last to leave.
The family is now living in in a tent. Her daughter is pregnant, and has been given medicine, vitamins and ultrasound scans.
Image credits and information
'Up to this moment, we've been calmer, more at peace,' Mildred says. Her 13-year-old son was the most badly affected. He told her he thought he was going to die. With psychological support, and time spent playing with other children, he is beginning to settle.
In La Guaira: 'we're going to rebuild'
Jorge Arenas pulled his mother out from under the rubble of their home in La Guaira. All nine members of his family survived.
'We're all kind of stunned,' he says. 'What we're living through in La Guaira is not easy. We need more, because we're only just beginning. It's not that just because they've evacuated some people, everything is fine.'
He is clear-eyed about the loss around him, and equally clear about what comes next. 'God bless those of us who are still alive, because we're going to rebuild La Guaira again.'
People returning to their old neighbourhoods have described streets they no longer recognise, with familiar landmarks gone. Even so, neighbours are finding each other again among what's left, and looking out for one another as they start to rebuild.
The church that became a supply centre
In Caraballeda, Father Laurence Betancourt is a Don Orione priest and parish priest at Our Lady of Candelaria. His parish is now doing three jobs at once.
Image credits and information
We've created a supply centre in our parish. We're receiving provisions, anything people can bring, so we can redistribute them and get them to the most vulnerable or needy.
Alongside it, the parish runs medical clinics, handing out the medicines that people cannot get anywhere else.
The third project is a dining hall for local children, offering four hours of care in the morning and then a cooked meal. Father Laurence wants it to reach further than that. 'We've thought about the children, but I think it's also necessary to think about their mothers, or elderly adults, people who are at home and might need a more balanced meal.'
Everything depends on the resources available. It's a small project but where formal services have been cut off, parishes like Father Laurence's are filling the gap. Faith networks reach into homes and camps in a way the formal response often can't.
How Christian Aid is responding in communities in Venezuela
Christian Aid has released funds to trusted ACT Alliance partners already working in Venezuela. These include the Lutheran World Federation, Diakonie Katastrophenhilfe and HEKS.
Water is the most urgent priority. Medical teams in La Guaira are treating people with acute diarrhoea after drinking river water, and nearly three in five shelters assessed lack safe drinking water. Partners have distributed water filters, food kits, mattresses, blankets and tents, and are providing psychosocial support to children and adults living with the aftershocks.
Two in three affected families are not in official shelters at all. They’re staying with relatives, in damaged homes, or out in the open. Mobile teams are being deployed across La Guaira, Aragua and Miranda to reach them.
Carlos E. Mejia, Christian Aid's Head of Impact for Latin America and the Caribbean, said: 'This is a tangible solidarity, one that nourishes hope as an act of resistance against a tragedy powerful enough to break it.'
