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False hopes after La Guaira
A month after twin earthquakes devastated northern Venezuela, false social media claims that survivors were still being rescued from the rubble in the OPP 26 residential complex in La Guaira reignited hope for families before Venezuelan civil protection authorities rejected the reports as false.
“Basado en hechos observados y verificados directamente por nuestros periodistas o por fuentes informadas”
Kurdistan24, citing AFP, said misinformation spread this week after posts alleged that three people had been found alive in the heavily damaged OPP 26 complex, prompting relatives to rush back to devastated sites.
Among those affected was Naiti Sarria, who told AFP she had spent the past month searching for her 74-year-old mother-in-law, Olga Hernandez, who had been inside one of the apartment towers when the earthquakes struck.
Venezuela’s civil protection agency later issued a public statement rejecting reports of any new survivor rescues at the location, describing the information circulating online as false, while the emotional consequences played out immediately for families already living with uncertainty.
The Associated Press death toll cited in the same account has risen to 5,069, with 16,740 injured, as recovery operations continue across the affected region including La Guaira.
Food, grief, and missing
While some families were pulled back by misinformation, chef Olivier de Belleroche was preparing thousands of meals for people affected by the earthquakes in Venezuela and for rescuers and relatives of those still missing.
In an interview with el Nuevo Herald from Venezuela, the director of disaster response at World Central Kitchen (WCK) said, "We built a kitchen in record time," as shipments of food arrived and a network of restaurants mobilized in Caracas and La Guaira to prepare thousands of meals each day.
De Belleroche described the grief he encountered as one mother told him she only wanted to recover “a little piece” of her son so she could give him a proper burial, and another woman said she had waited several days to find the remains of her brother and his family.
He said WCK’s operation is based at Club Puerto Azul in La Guaira, where he reported that WCK was preparing 35,000 meals, including 13,000 sandwiches and cold meals and 22,000 hot meals.
As families continued searching for missing loved ones amid flattened apartment buildings along the coast of La Guaira, the BBC reported government officials saying the death toll had surpassed 5,300 and that estimates of the number still missing could be as high as 50,000.
Long recovery and forensics
As the disaster entered a longer recovery phase, humanitarian organizations warned that the emergency was far from over and that recovery would require years of humanitarian assistance, with the Red Cross warning that the real challenge was only beginning.
“Families in Venezuela are still searching for the remains of their loved ones, lost amid the rubble of flattened apartment buildings that line the coast of La Guaira, the region worst-hit by twin earthquakes on 24 June”
voz.us reported that Venezuela still has no official protocol to register missing people, making it difficult to determine how many remain under the rubble and coordinate recovery efforts, while families described searches depending on volunteers and neighbors with limited tools.
In La Guaira, families and officials continued to press for identification, and Univision reported that the Government of Venezuela made a call to families of children who remain missing, offering forensic verification for identifying 38 bodies of children and adolescents kept in a morgue habilitada in the port of La Guaira.
Univision said the process is coordinated by the Servicio Nacional de Medicina y Ciencias Forenses (Senamecf) and will be carried out at Bolipuertos Los Silos in La Guaira, with voluntary DNA samples offered for identification through comparisons of genetic profiles.
Euronews reported that the Venezuelan government’s balance rose to 5,398 deaths after adding 52 more, while the number of injured remained at 16,740 and 17,907 people had lost their housing, underscoring the scale of what comes next for survivors and families.
