The dual earthquakes that struck Venezuela on Wednesday — measured at magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5 by the U.S. Geological Survey — have killed at least 1,719 people, with tens of thousands still missing and some 16,000 left homeless after hundreds of residential buildings collapsed, according to officials. The Trump administration has responded by doubling its initial aid commitment to $300 million, including $100 million for the U.N.-led international response, and deploying more than 300 search-and-rescue personnel from four teams, including teams from Los Angeles County, Florida and Fairfax County, Virginia, officials said.
For the United States, the disaster has become the first major test of its alliance with Rodríguez’s interim government, which took power after a U.S. military raid captured former leader Nicolás Maduro in January. The government she leads is known for corruption and mismanagement that left Venezuela’s economy in ruins and drove more than eight million people to flee abroad. “We’ve had a natural catastrophe and Venezuela doesn’t have the means or resources to deal with this because these people have robbed the country and left it destroyed,” said Diego Arria, a former high-ranking Venezuelan diplomat who lives in Miami.
American military forces reopened one runway at Caracas’s main international airport after both runways were damaged and part of the air-traffic control tower collapsed, U.S. officials said. The restored runway can now handle a dozen C-17 military transports and other heavy aircraft daily with relief supplies. U.S. Marines are repairing the damaged port at La Guaira so it can accept aid shipments. Four U.S.-funded field hospitals have been set up, and the State Department signed a deal with Starlink to provide emergency satellite internet, with free service in Venezuela for at least a month.
Rescue teams from the United States on Monday pulled a father and son from the rubble in La Guaira four days after the quakes, drawing applause from residents. Firefighters and paramedics from Virginia used concrete-cutting saws, acoustic devices and precision-locating equipment to reach the pair, who were laid on makeshift stretchers and carried to an ambulance as onlookers shouted “Gracias! Gracias!”
The moment of relief contrasted sharply with the reception Rodríguez received elsewhere. When she visited a hard-hit neighborhood, crowds jeered and chanted “Get out! Get out!” Venezuelans searching for loved ones mocked National Guard troops, yelling that they were incompetent and only good for crushing protests. Some people lambasted servicemembers for taking selfies outside flattened buildings. In one widely shared video, a man drove a soldier and an official from his ransacked home.
Obstacles have also emerged for international rescue teams. Francisco Lermanda, a Chilean search-and-rescue worker, said that Venezuelan soldiers have constantly asked his team members for their documents while they were working, interrupting efforts to find survivors. One soldier told the Chileans they had orders to check up on the foreign search-and-rescue teams because they could be “Yankee spies,” Lermanda said in a video interview with local journalists.
Some Republican lawmakers used the crisis to criticize the Rodríguez government. Sen. Rick Scott (R., Fla.) urged Rodríguez to “put her agenda aside.” Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R., Fla.) posted Sunday on X that “while the U.S. increases its presence in Venezuela, we should pick up thug Diosdado Cabello and bring him to justice so he can stop impeding the distribution of aid.” In a widely shared video, an American rescue worker was heard addressing Cabello directly, saying, “There’s somebody over there we can try and go help. You don’t want to help the person over there?”
Senior State Department official Jeremy Lewin, who oversees foreign assistance, told reporters Monday that “the United States is really driving this response” and that “we are not going to leave until the job is done.” John Barrett, the top U.S. diplomat in Venezuela, told a Colombian reporter that Washington had “a great deal of confidence…in the local authorities” and that he had seen “total transparency and a concern for taking care of the people.”
Praise from U.S. officials has sharpened resentment among ordinary Venezuelans, according to some observers. Arria said he worried the U.S. might hurt its own interests by siding too closely with Rodríguez. “I think what they’re doing is causing resentment among the people there,” he said. “Today it’s against the Delcy government. Tomorrow it’ll be against the United States.”
Martin Rodil, a Venezuelan activist who has worked with U.S. law enforcement to investigate Venezuelan officials, offered a different view. “People don’t realize, she’s under the rubble, too,” he said of Rodríguez.
Trump administration officials are casting the U.S. response as broader than humanitarian relief, looking into longer-term reconstruction financing through multilateral lenders and Venezuela’s oil revenues, which are held in accounts managed by the U.S. Treasury. The USS Fort Lauderdale is docked at La Guaira to serve as a logistics hub. For many Venezuelans, the disaster is exposing institutional weaknesses that long predated the earthquakes.