Caracas — The race to find survivors continued Tuesday six days after powerful twin earthquakes devastated northern Venezuela. A NASA assessment based on satellite imagery suggests almost 60,000 buildings may have been damaged or destroyed, and teams from all over the world have joined increasingly frantic efforts to find anyone still trapped alive under the rubble.
The confirmed death toll from the 7.5 and 7.2 magnitude quakes, which struck within a minute of each other just after 6 p.m. local time on June 24, had risen to more than 1,700 by Tuesday.
With thousands of people still missing, rescuers said time was quickly running out to reach anyone who survived the temblors.
Search efforts in the state of La Guaira, which hugs Venezuela's northern Caribbean coastline, have continued apace, and an American task force from Fairfax, Virginia was among those working near the epicenter of the catastrophe on Monday.
Rescuers search for victims at a collapsed building following earthquakes that struck Venezuela and other regions in the Caribbean, June 28, 2026, in Carabellada, La Guaira, Venezuela.
Jesus Vargas/Getty
CBS News joined the team as they searched under a collapsed building, shouting from both inside and outside of what was left of the structure for anyone who could hear the cries to bang on something three times as a signal.
There was no response.
"My daughter is there," said Miguel Coello as he desperately asked American rescuer Josh Morrison to help find his 22-year-old daughter.
"Fourteen people inside — maybe they are not alive, all of them. But at the end of the story, we need to recover our bodies, you know," said the father.
Morrison said his team was responding to such pleas for help as much as they can, but he acknowledged that, more than five days after the disaster, "it gets more difficult the farther it goes along."
He said they treat each rescue attempt as if it were the first, "and we'll continue to work until we get no more signs of life."
Rubmar Carolina Garcia sifted through her son Adrian's belongings amid the rubble of one building. She lost her 13-year-old and her own mother to the quakes. They were found clinging to one another.
"He was a very good boy," she told CBS News.
As night fell on Monday, teams tried to rescue a security guard who had been trapped for five days.
"There is a clock, and it will, you know, eventually come to a point where rescue efforts will have to be called off, but that's well above us, and we will work until then," stressed Morrison.
According to a NASA assessment of satellite imagery taken before and after the June 24 earthquakes hit Venezuela, "approximately 58,870 buildings were likely damaged or destroyed across the affected region."
NASA
According to its assessment of satellite imagery taken before and just after the earthquakes, NASA said that "approximately 58,870 buildings were likely damaged or destroyed across the affected region" in Venezuela.
The space agency stressed that it was a "preliminary product produced within days of the event," which had not been corroborated by on-the-ground assessments in the immediate wake of the disaster.
Tucker Reals contributed to this report.
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