As Venezuela counts its dead and races to find the missing, the United Nations is warning that the country’s earthquake disaster is fast becoming a long, grinding humanitarian emergency.
The UN has launched an urgent appeal for nearly $300 million (€262m) towards Venezuela earthquake relief operations after the death toll from the disaster rose to more than 3,600 people.
The scale of need is vast after one of Latin America’s worst earthquake disasters left thousands of people homeless and thousands more still missing. In heavily damaged La Guaira, families are still clawing through shattered concrete, searching the rubble for the bodies of loved ones.
“Donors are already stepping up, and I pay tribute to them, and I thank them,” UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher said during a meeting on the disaster.
Officials were appealing for $296 million to provide urgently needed aid for 1.3 million people over six months, he said.
Alongside the plea for aid, Venezuela’s government used the UN meeting to press a separate demand: access to money it says is being kept out of reach as the recovery begins.
“We call upon all countries currently holding blocked funds belonging to Venezuela to initiate a plan to release these funds so that they can be used for recovery efforts,” Foreign Minister Yvan Gil told the UN meeting.
“There are accounts belonging to the Venezuelan state in various parts of the world that have been frozen as a result of illegal sanctions.”
Mr Gil referenced gold held by Britain and finances frozen by the United States.
The US government has already lifted a number of economic sanctions against Venezuela for four months to facilitate relief operations.
Washington had imposed sweeping economic sanctions on Venezuela, particularly from 2019 onward, in an effort to squeeze the leftist government of president Nicolas Maduro, whom the United States considered illegitimate.
Since US forces toppled Maduro in January, ties with Caracas have improved.
The Trump administration has supported interim president Delcy Rodriguez and has gradually eased sanctions, particularly to facilitate the development of Venezuela’s huge oil reserves.
Even before the 24 June tragedy, Venezuela struggled with decades of economic turmoil that left infrastructure and health services depleted.
The UN estimates the quakes caused $6.7 billion (€5.86bn) in damage – equivalent to 6% of Venezuela’s GDP.
The international airport serving Caracas was also damaged and is still closed to commercial flights.
Venezuela quake survivor ‘reborn’ after 8 days in rubble
Now in hospital, Hernan Gil managed to talk to his children via video call accompanied day and night by his wife
In the midst of the staggering numbers, one man’s survival has cut through the despair — a week underground, a rescue measured in inches, and a return to daylight that many Venezuelans have clung to as proof that hope is still possible.
A survivor of the recent twin earthquakes in Venezuela has recounted his week-long struggle trapped under the building where he worked.
Hernan Gil was working his shift as a security guard in the basement of a building in Venezuela on the afternoon of 24 June when he felt the earth shake.
The first tremor was brief, Mr Gil recounted in an interview with AFP from the hospital room where he was recovering after being rescued from the depths of a collapsed building.
Mr Gil became a symbol of hope for Venezuela after he survived eight days buried alive by the double earthquake that devastated the north of the country, leaving at least 3,535 dead.
“The second one was incredibly strong,” said the 43-year-old, who remembers freezing inside his guard booth, overcome with nerves.
Watch moment Hernan Gil pulled out of rubble alive after eight days
He heard a neighbour in the car park say it was an earthquake — and then, he said, “everything collapsed”.
Mr Gil felt the structure give way as debris rained down, stones striking the back of his head and his eye.
“I lost consciousness for a moment. When I woke up, everything was dark… From then on, everything was uncertain.”
Mr Gil said he could neither see nor make out voices. He tried to call the neighbour he had last seen before the ground seemed to swallow them, “but nothing”.
“At that moment, despair overwhelmed me,” said Mr Gil, who began shouting for help, but received no response.
In pitch-black darkness, stuck partly on his knees, starving for air and barely able to move, he endured aftershock after aftershock.
“I felt like the wall was completely crushing me.”
Hernan Gil is seen carried on a stretcher away from the scene
There were jubilant scenes among rescue teams after Hernan Gil was pulled from the rubble
‘I prayed a lot’
Even after what he had survived, Mr Gil appeared steady and upbeat 72 hours after being pulled from the void where he had been trapped under a collapsing eight-story building.
Seated in an armchair in a blue hospital gown, his left arm held in a sling, the security guard said it was his faith that carried him through the longest hours.
“I prayed a lot. I cried out to God, and I said, ‘My God, why me? Why like this? Please, at least let me see my children.'”
He said the position he was trapped in offered no relief. He tried to turn from side to side, but sleep would not come.
His legs were bruised from the rocks he landed on. His nose bled. His right eye was swollen and red — injuries he said he did not fully grasp at the time.
In the silence, he said, his mind kept returning to the people waiting above: his wife, Gusbimar Gonzalez, searching outside for any sign of life.
He also thought of his children and his deceased father.
“So many memories came flooding back,” he said.
Time blurred underground, he said, until the third day, when he caught something he had been straining for: footsteps, “but very far away”.
Rescuers from Chile and the US reached Hernan Gill after more than three days of complex operations
He screamed again, calling out until — finally — someone answered.
Mr Gil said he smiled as the reality hit him: “Oh my God, there’s a step. There’s a glimmer of hope.”
What followed, he said, was anything but simple — a rescue that became its own ordeal, which he described as “a fierce struggle”.
‘I was reborn’
As rescue teams from seven countries worked to reach him, keep him hydrated, and stop him from slipping into despair, Mr Gil said the walls continued to shift, tightening their grip as minutes turned into hours.
And when two rescuers from Chile and the United States finally reached him after more than three days of complex operations, he said he could not even muster celebration.
“The hardest part was getting out,” recalled Mr Gil, whose legs had been entangled in a chair.
For Mr Gil, survival itself feels like a dividing line — one life before, another after.
“I was reborn,” he said.
Now in the hospital, Mr Gil managed to talk to his children via video call and can’t wait to go home. But the doctors haven’t given him a discharge date.
Sleep comes more easily, he said, though the memory of the underground terror still jolts him awake at times.
With his wife at his side day and night, Mr Gil said he does not yet know what the next chapter will bring.
For now, he is holding onto small, concrete plans: celebrating his son’s birthday on 15 July, taking long-awaited holidays at the beach — and never working in a basement again.
