The phone call from Venezuela’s president came in just after 4 a.m.
For years, Venezuela’s autocratic government had been wary of the U.N., seeing its aid programs and human rights investigations as a threat to its control. But hours after a pair of history-making quakes hit the country, President Delcy Rodríguez picked up the phone. Gianluca Rampolla, the highest-ranking U.N. officer in Venezuela answered. He had offered help from rescue teams around the world.
“Get them all in,” Mr. Rampolla recounted Ms. Rodríguez saying, “doesn’t matter countries, doesn’t matter allies, non-allies — bring them all in.”
In the hours after the June 24 earthquakes, Venezuela flung its doors open to the world, an about-face after years of near isolation. Rescuers and aid workers mobilized almost immediately, including from the United States, and from longtime foes like Israel, Guyana and El Salvador. They had search dogs, fiber-optic cameras and sound-detection machines.
The foreign experience and advanced equipment saved lives. But Ms. Rodríguez had to summon global help partly because the decisions she and her ruling party had made in recent years had left the state weak, poor and disorganized.
To survive a profound economic crisis, international sanctions and electoral losses, the Socialist Party cut budgets, enabled corruption schemes, crushed dissent and prioritized loyalty over competence.
When disaster hit, the government was blind and hand-tied.
Shortages of skills and equipment tied to the government’s own decisions limited its response in the crucial early hours, when trapped victims stood the best chance of rescue.
It took hours to determine that the hardest-hit zone was La Guaira, a state near Caracas, the capital, because of limited seismic data and reconnaissance capacity. It wasn’t until the next sunrise, about 10 hours after the quakes hit, that Ms. Rodríguez’s government got rescue efforts off the ground.
To most Venezuelans, that effort was feeble.
After years of austerity, emergency crews were shadows of their former selves, forcing some rescuers to work the rubble with bare hands. Corruption and sanctions meant the government had little functioning machinery to pull apart fallen buildings.
Spending cuts and U.S. strikes on Venezuelan airfields in January had left the military with fewer operating aircraft to locate disaster zones and rush aid there. Years of counterintelligence measures designed to prevent coups had left Venezuela’s armed forces atomized, lacking a clear chain of command when the catastrophe required coordinated action.
Crucially, after years of repression, the government faced deep distrust from its people. With no confidence that officials could save their compatriots, civilians streamed into La Guaira to pull people from the debris and deliver supplies. By the afternoon of the next day, June 25, well-meaning citizens had clogged the main highway, complicating rescue efforts.
The government initially kept the highway open — avoiding confrontations between civilians and the military, but perhaps elevating the death toll in La Guaira.
A calamity of such magnitude would have tested even the most prepared government. But to many Venezuelans — already hungry for change after 27 years of Socialist Party rule — the shortcomings exposed the full bankruptcy of Ms. Rodríguez’s government.
“They sent no one to help,” said Lisett, 24, one of thousands of people displaced by the quakes. “We have no leader. And the caretaker president?’ Well, I don’t know what she’s taking care of.”
On the international stage, however, Ms. Rodríguez has in many ways emerged from the disaster in a stronger position. She has made new allies and deepened her partnership with President Trump, who said she was doing a “fantastic job” after the quakes.
This account of the initial 48 hours following the quakes is based on interviews with more than two dozen Venezuelan and U.S. officials, businessmen and diplomats, as well as numerous rescuers and volunteers. Some officials requested anonymity to discuss private conversations. Ms. Rodríguez’s spokesman referred reporters to a propaganda video stressing that the president’s “top priority in the first 72 hours was to save lives.”
Officially, the earthquakes have killed at least 6,100 people, but many more are missing and likely dead.
When the shaking began on the evening of June 24, many Venezuelan officials believed they were being bombed — again — by a foreign force. Just six months before, U.S. forces had attacked La Guaira and Caracas, killing about 100 people and arresting President Nicolás Maduro.
At 6:04 p.m., when the first quake hit, José Alejandro Terán, La Guaira’s governor, was showering. As he rushed out, windows shattered and tiles cracked. He grabbed his 15-year-old daughter, he said, huddled with her by a door frame and prayed.
The second, stronger quake came 39 seconds later.
“I never imagined living through something like this, not even in a case of conventional war” Mr. Terán said.
He drove through darkened streets filled with shrieking victims and flattened buildings. Gas canisters exploded around him. There was no cellphone service. When he got hold of a radio, many subordinates did not respond, and Mr. Terán would learn that about half his cabinet, some senior security officials, several relatives and many friends were dead.
Across a mountain range, Ms. Rodríguez was meeting her foreign minister in Caracas when the quakes struck. She rushed to meet her senior officials at a nearby cultural center. Along the way, she saw a residential tower collapse.
Aftershocks shook their impromptu base, a colonial manor, as Ms. Rodríguez’s inner circle worked the phones. Some of her first calls and texts were to American officials.
The United States Geological Survey initially located the epicenter of both quakes hundreds of miles away from La Guaira, which focused attention on the wrong area. The strength of the quakes — of 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude — meant reports of collapsed buildings and deaths poured in from many parts of the country, including Caracas, making it difficult to prioritize. The sun set soon after the quakes, making reconnaissance harder.
The geological agency clarified weeks later that the second, more powerful, quake struck near La Guaira.
Senior State Department officials were notified of the quakes within minutes and began organizing a U.S. response even before speaking to their Venezuelan counterparts.
Within an hour after the quakes, Trey Espy, an assistant chief of the Los Angeles County Fire Department, said the State Department had instructed him to prepare to deploy to Venezuela.
Mr. Trump had already made a political bet on the success of Ms. Rodríguez’s government months earlier. Some U.S. officials said the White House decided to mount an aid operation to reward Ms. Rodríguez for meeting America’s demands. It was a sharp turnaround from the administration’s limited response to some other recent global disasters.
The quakes hit in the middle of the night for Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was in Bahrain. He discussed the disaster with Mr. Trump before contacting Ms. Rodríguez later on June 24, and offering America’s full backing, according to a U.S. and a Venezuelan official.
Mr. Rubio and Ms. Rodríguez would speak several times in the days after the quakes, the U.S. official said. The U.S. would also activate roughly 2,000 U.S. service members and send more than 300 rescuers.
The United States government has committed nearly $400 million to earthquake response efforts and has loosened economic sanctions on Venezuela to expedite humanitarian payments.
Washington’s effective control of Venezuela’s public revenues, however, meant Ms. Rodríguez was constrained in how she could spend the country’s own money.
The U.S. Treasury receives most of Venezuela’s export revenues and then disburses it for uses approved by Mr. Rubio. The system has reduced corruption, but has made it harder for Venezuela to move money around quickly.
The damage to Venezuela’s main airport, which is in La Guaira, presented one of the biggest problems. The day after the quakes, U.S. military engineers landed at the airport to repair the landing strip and temporarily take over the control tower, because some operators had died. By June 26 large military aircraft were bringing in millions of pounds of supplies.
When the quakes struck, La Guaira’s top security official, Andrés Goncalves, found himself cut off from the outside world. He said he organized a makeshift response from his home in the Caraballeda district, a two-story compound combining living quarters, a police station and a first-aid station.
Lit by a portable power plant, the compound became a lighthouse in the surrounding blackout, Mr. Goncalves said. He was well stocked with basic emergency supplies but lacked specialized rescue equipment.
Dozens of injured people were brought to the compound, he said. Some were stabilized, others died on the floor. The earthquakes killed his mother, sister and three other relatives.
Back in Caracas, Ms. Rodríguez, a known micromanager, initially tried keeping the rescue effort under her control. On the evening of June 24, her officials reached out to governments and international organizations with which they already had working relationships, including the United States, Switzerland and the U.N.
As the first night ended, Ms. Rodríguez broadened her appeal. Soon after sunrise, she traveled to La Guaira’s regional military base, and stayed there throughout that day.
Israel rushed satellite imagery to Venezuela and sent demolition advisers to La Guaira, a stark turnaround after years of Venezuela’s support for Palestinian independence. El Salvador’s right-wing president, Nayib Bukele, long a boogeyman of Venezuela’s propaganda, spoke with Ms. Rodríguez hours after the quake. Salvadoran rescuers were among the first on the ground.
The damage to La Guaira’s airport meant that the first rescue teams landed at a military base about 90 miles away.
By then, the stream of volunteers and victims’ relatives had blocked the only highway to La Guaira, delaying the rescuers’ deployment. The civilian rush confronted Ms. Rodríguez with one of her most consequential choices.
Militarizing access risked sparking riots. Leaving it open hindered the rescue operation.
“There were so many people desperate to come look for their relatives that if you closed access in the beginning, Caracas would have exploded,” Mr. Terán, the governor, said.
The government vacillated. According to a senior Venezuelan official, Ms. Rodríguez argued for closing access to La Guaira soon after the quakes, but was initially overruled by Diosdado Cabello, Venezuela’s powerful interior minister and Ms. Rodríguez’s ruling party rival.
Mr. Cabello finally announced he was restricting access to La Guaira on the evening of June 26, about 50 hours after the quakes.
By then, the roads to and inside the disaster zone were already gridlocked. The injured were dying in idled ambulances. Emergency workers sat in traffic.
The 310 American firefighters, engineers, doctors and other specialists sent in by the U.S. government went home after about 12 days.
They had rescued five survivors.
Sheyla Urdaneta contributed reporting from Buenos Aires, Eric Schmitt from Washington and Patricia Sulbarán from New York.
