The Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed this Thursday that Washington is already sending search and rescue teams to Venezuela, in response to the devastating earthquakes that shook the north of the country on June 24, which have so far resulted in 164 fatalities and 971 injuries.
"We are already deploying search and rescue teams from Fairfax County, Virginia, and Los Angeles. There will be others that we will add," Rubio said, emphasizing that the most urgent need at this moment is the rescue of people trapped under the rubble of collapsed buildings.
The logistics of the deployment faces an immediate obstacle
The Maiquetía International Airport suffered severe structural damage, with at least one runway cracked. Rubio indicated that the Department of Defense must provide the necessary assets to operate under those conditions, and confirmed that he has already spoken with the Secretary of Defense to coordinate the effort.
The U.S. is also providing satellite imagery of coastal areas where Venezuelan authorities do not have complete visibility of the damage.
"We are also assisting them with aerial images, particularly in coastal areas where they do not have complete visibility on the extent of the damages," Rubio explained.
The head of U.S. diplomacy set a critical window of 48 to 72 hours for rescuing survivors trapped under the rubble, and warned that a more accurate assessment of long-term needs will only be possible once the teams are on the ground.
The response is not exclusively American. Rubio mentioned that Qatar has already offered assistance, that El Salvador quickly joined in, and that Chile and other countries in the region have reached out to Washington to coordinate efforts.
"We have a response from the entire government. It will be large, swift, and effective," he affirmed.
The two earthquakes with magnitudes of 7.1 and 7.5 struck northern Venezuela with only 39 seconds apart on Wednesday at 6:04 PM local time.
The 7.5 earthquake is the strongest recorded in the country since 1900, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), which issued a maximum Red Alert and estimates between 10,000 and 100,000 potential fatalities in its most significant probabilistic projection, with a 42% likelihood.
The acting president Delcy Rodríguez declared a constitutional state of emergency, designated the state of La Guaira as a disaster zone, and announced a fund of 200 million dollars to address the crisis. "The state of La Guaira is a true tragedy.
"There are dozens of collapsed buildings, and we are engaged in very arduous rescue efforts to save the lives that God allows us to save," he stated.
Rodríguez publicly thanked Trump and Rubio for their support, something unimaginable under Nicolás Maduro's administration. "I want to thank President Donald Trump and his administration for maintaining constant contact with the Venezuelan government, providing support and solidarity, and that we will be receiving rescuers in the first hours," she stated.
This response occurs in a radically different diplomatic context than in previous years: after Maduro was captured in January 2026, Rodríguez adopted a pragmatic stance towards Washington, and the U.S. reopened its embassy in Caracas on March 30 as part of a normalization agreement.
Notably, Cuba—historical ally of the Venezuelan regime—was not among the countries mentioned by Rodríguez while thanking for the international support received following the catastrophe.
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