Earthquake in Venezuela: death toll rises to 3,500; 150 people are buried without identification

Fantastic accompanies anguish and challenges in post-earthquake Venezuela
The death toll from the double earthquake in Venezuela rose to 3,535, according to a report released this Monday (6) by the country's authorities. The tragedy left 16,740 injured and 17,854 homeless.
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The two powerful tremors, of magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5, caused the collapse of buildings in Caracas and devastated the neighboring state of La Guaira, where residents are still trying to recover the bodies of family members buried under the rubble.
On a social network, the president of the National Assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, published updated data on the disaster. According to him:
6,462 people were rescued;
86,794 families were assisted;
17,854 people were displaced;
190 buildings collapsed;
856 buildings were affected.
According to a platform created by a popular initiative, around 30,000 people are still missing. The numbers have not been confirmed by the government.
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Bodies buried without identification
Venezuelans search for victims of the June 24 earthquake almost 15 days after the disaster
Martin Bernetti/AFP
On Sunday (5), more than 150 unidentified bodies were buried in a long row of individual graves in a cemetery in Venezuela.
In the municipality of Catia La Mar, in La Guaira, a group of men worked with backhoes to open trenches in an isolated area of dry land in the La Esperanza cemetery.
Eli Zavala, a resident of the region, told AFP that, the day after the earthquakes, they began to open the graves "so that all these people would have dignified graves."
The burial sites "are numbered by plots and also by the code" defined so that unidentified bodies can be located by family members.
The authorities also photographed each of the corpses before burial.
The rectangles are delimited by white stones. On each grave, there is a small bouquet of flowers at the foot of a white cross, with a plaque that bears the inscription "Special identification" and the date of death: June 24, 2026.
'There will be no social upheaval'
Rescue teams work at the site of a building complex that collapsed after the earthquakes of June 24, in La Guaira, Venezuela
REUTERS/Ricardo Arduengo
The magnitude of the tragedy overloaded the capacity of morgues and hospitals. An improvised warehouse to store bodies was set up in warehouses in the port of La Guaira.
On Sunday, Venezuelans celebrated the date of independence in the midst of the tragedy. In an event carried out with the Venezuelan flag flying at half-mast, the interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, ruled out a social upheaval in light of the complaints of those affected.
"There will be no social upheaval, what exists here is the deep social solidarity of our people," said Rodríguez, who took power after the capture of Nicolás Maduro, at the beginning of the year, in an operation carried out by the United States.
In the region devastated by the earthquake, residents told AFP that they are outraged by the actions of the authorities. In La Guaira, many continue trying to recover the bodies of family members amidst the rubble, in increasingly difficult conditions.
"This is horrible (...), but I'm not moving from here because I know he's there. I found his motorbike, I found his helmet, he's there, God willing, alive. If not, (I want) to at least find him, see him, we need to give them his eternal rest," Zuly, a woman looking for her 23-year-old son, told AFP years old, who worked in a bakery.
Since the day of the double earthquake, she has slept with her daughter in a square next to the destroyed bakery, waiting to find him. "I won't leave here without my son", says the mother.
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Source: G1