The donation drive in Doral, a Miami-Dade city where more than 40% of residents are of Venezuelan origin, gathered pace in the days after the June 24 earthquakes as the scale of destruction became clear. The U.S. Geological Survey recorded two powerful temblors — a magnitude-7.2 quake followed 39 seconds later by a magnitude-7.5 quake — striking near the capital Caracas on a national holiday evening, collapsing buildings across the densely populated region.
Simón Peña, who donated cases of drinking water at a collection point in Doral, told BBC Mundo he was waiting for news from relatives he had not been able to reach. “I want to help as much as possible and do whatever little we can from here,” Peña said. Many of Doral’s Venezuelan residents fled during the presidencies of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, and the community has maintained strong ties to its home country.
Similar efforts were underway in other U.S. cities with large Venezuelan populations. In Houston, donation sites opened in the suburb of Katy, about 30 miles west of downtown — an area so heavily Venezuelan it has earned the nickname “Katyzuela,” according to the Associated Press. There, José Arenas, a maritime industry consultant, said his wife was eventually able to reach her aunt, who lives in a high-rise apartment in Caracas and had sent a distraught WhatsApp message after the quake. “She was crying and screaming and saying she was in pain but not sure from where,” Arenas told the AP. “She said she lost everything. She was desperate.”
The death toll from the twin earthquakes has continued to climb since initial reports. MSI previously reported that Venezuelan Health Minister Carlos Alvarado confirmed at least 235 dead and more than 4,300 injured, with international rescue teams from the United States and El Salvador arriving to support search-and-rescue operations. The scale of the disaster has underscored the vulnerability of a country already weakened by years of economic collapse and political instability.
Many members of the diaspora who are organizing aid face their own precarity. MSI has documented that more than 700,000 Venezuelans lost temporary protected status and work authorization following the U.S. military operation that captured Maduro in January, leaving hundreds of thousands in legal limbo even as they mobilize to help family members from abroad.