Venezuela's confirmed earthquake death toll has climbed to nearly 3,700, two weeks after back-to-back tremors flattened residential buildings along the country's northern coast, with thousands of people still unaccounted for and family members continuing to dig through rubble for remains, according to The New York Times.
The twin earthquakes, measuring magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5, struck within seconds of each other on June 24, centered near Morón in Carabobo state, approximately 170 kilometers west of Caracas. La Guaira state suffered the worst damage, according to The Associated Press.
Although most international search and rescue teams have departed, families have stayed behind at collapse sites, scraping through concrete debris with their bare hands, according to The Times. The search objective has shifted from finding survivors to recovering bodies. Víctor José Calderón Castillo, who said he lost approximately 20 relatives in the disaster, told The Times he was sitting atop a collapsed building where he believed three bodies remained buried. "There are no survivors here," he said. "We are looking for bodies."
The scale of destruction and a shortage of debris-removal equipment have left thousands of victims still unaccounted for, according to The Times. Earlier in the disaster, the sheer number of bodies arriving in quick succession strained Venezuela's forensic infrastructure beyond capacity, forcing authorities to repurpose a seaport as a makeshift morgue and store the dead in refrigerated shipping containers, according to The New York Times. Forensic workers and aid officials said the true death toll was likely higher than official figures.
The United Nations procured 10,000 body bags in coordination with the Venezuelan government, according to The Associated Press. Joel Mirabal, a forensic technician, told the AP that the operation could stretch across as many as three months, and warned that the sheer scale of the disaster would ultimately require the use of mass graves.
Washington committed over $300 million to disaster relief efforts, with the State Department saying the money would go toward medical services, food, clean water, sanitation, shelter and logistical support, according to BBC News. In the immediate aftermath of the earthquakes, a community-built website used to log missing persons showed upward of 46,000 names, a figure that Reuters was unable to independently confirm.