Just before lunch on October 10, 1986, the walls and ceiling of my office in the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador began to rumble. It sounded as if a subway train were bearing down on us.
“Terremoto!”
Earthquake.
By the time the shaking stopped, 1,500 people were dead. The embassy building, constructed to Los Angeles earthquake standards, cracked and broke, but thankfully did not collapse. For months afterwards, my team worked almost exclusively on earthquake-related issues from the second bedroom of the ambassador’s residence.
An earthquake is unlike any other disaster. Its force is immense, immediate and indiscriminate. It brings out the best in people - rescue crews, neighbors, doctors and volunteers working beyond exhaustion — but it also exposes every weakness in a society. The poor suffer first and most because the oldest, most overcrowded buildings are usually the least able to withstand the shock.
Corruption, too, can be deadly. In San Salvador, 500 people died in a building that had been ordered torn down after an earlier earthquake. Instead, the owner plastered over the cracks and paid off the building inspectors.
The double earthquakes that struck Venezuela on June 26 brought back those memories in a flash.
Disaster relief and recovery are never fast enough
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
As of July 5, the confirmed death toll in Venezuela is more than 3,300, with thousands injured, and more than tens of thousands of people reported missing.
In any country, one would hope that a disaster of this magnitude would bring people together: to pull survivors from the rubble, shelter families who have lost their homes, treat the injured, and restore power, water and communications.
But a government’s response to a natural disaster is inevitably viewed through the lens of politics. In Venezuela, that lens is especially dark.
After 26 years of despotic mismanagement under Hugo Chávez and then his successors, Nicolás Maduro and Delcy Rodríguez, Venezuela was on the edge before the earthquake struck. The economy had collapsed. Inflation was running at 20% to 30% per month. Hospitals, ambulance services and fire departments barely functioned. Roughly one-quarter of the country’s 32 million people had fled.
Even in wealthy countries with strong institutions, disaster relief is never fast enough and reconstruction is never as swift as people need it to be. We saw that in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and again after the 2024 flooding in western North Carolina.
Now imagine a disaster of this scale in a country where the basic institutions needed to respond have been hollowed out. Venezuela has not experienced an earthquake of this magnitude near Caracas since 1967. There is little current national experience to draw on, and the systems that should be leading the response have been weakened by years of politicization, economic collapse and corruption.
Credit: Miguel Medina/Pool AFP via AP
Credit: Miguel Medina/Pool AFP via AP
How you can help disaster victims
The international community is responding generously. Rescue squads from around the world are working to uncover victims in the hundreds of collapsed buildings. Emergency supplies and medical teams continue to arrive. The United States has pledged $300 million in assistance and the U.S. Southern Command continues to deliver supplies, mobile hospitals, and troops.
U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Kevin Jarrard is coordinating American relief efforts in Caracas alongside a State Department Disaster Relief Response Team.
That coordination is not easy. The United States is working through a regime populated by Nicolas Maduro appointees, including “Interim President” Delcy Rodríguez, whom Maduro selected as his vice president. These are the same people who destroyed Venezuela’s economy and political institutions. They are the reason hospitals lack funding, emergency services are broken, and the local currency is nearly worthless.
The United States is moving aid into Venezuela as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, these efforts are hampered by the very government we are trying to help, as Venezuelan Guardia Nacional troops slow the delivery of supplies, demand that teams moving rubble to rescue people stop and present identification, and in some cases actually loot buildings.
It’s time for Maj. Gen. Jarrard to do some hands-on coordination with the Venezuelan government. With each passing hour, the chances of freeing trapped victims diminishes.
Disasters do not wait for honest governments, functioning institutions or repaired relationships. People trapped under concrete need help now. Families sleeping outside need food, water and medicine now. Doctors without supplies need support now.
Please help. You can make a donation to Catholic Relief Services, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, or World Central Kitchen.
Charles Shapiro is a retired career diplomat who served as U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela 2002-2004. Shapiro is professor of practice at the Nunn School at Georgia Tech and president emeritus of the World Affairs Council of Atlanta. He also delivered the Atlanta Journal in 1961.
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