UN says Venezuela quake damage may equal about 6% of GDP

# UN says Venezuela quake damage may equal about 6% of GDP

The United Nations says the twin earthquakes that hit Venezuela caused about $6.7 billion in direct physical damage, an amount it estimates is equal to roughly 6 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

The supplied AFP via TRT World report says the death toll had reached 1,430 when the figure was updated and that 3,238 people had been injured. It also said the UN’s humanitarian agencies were warning that more than 50,000 people were missing and that millions more were feared to lack sanitation and other basic needs.

The UN Development Programme’s preliminary assessment, as quoted in the report, said the damage estimate was based on seismic modelling, satellite imagery and population data. It covered losses to assets such as housing and economic property, but not wider disruption, infrastructure damage or longer-term reconstruction costs. That means the final bill could be much larger than the headline figure.

The report places the disaster in a country already weakened by years of economic collapse. Venezuela’s public services, hospitals and emergency systems have been hollowed out, and the earthquake struck a population that was already facing food insecurity and limited access to healthcare and water. That context helps explain why the UN and aid agencies said the humanitarian effect could be far larger than the physical damage numbers alone suggest.

The quake sequence also created a race against time. The report said the first 72 hours after a disaster are usually the key window for finding survivors, and it described residents pulling at rubble from collapsed apartment buildings in desperate attempts to reach people trapped underneath. Search-and-rescue teams from at least 17 countries were being mobilised, with one infant pulled alive from the wreckage in La Guaira more than a day after the tremors.

The social and political strain is visible in the report as well. Interim Venezuelan leader Delcy Rodriguez appealed for solidarity, while the US said it had opened one runway at Simon Bolivar International Airport and had military aircraft and a naval ship assisting off the coast. Those measures underline how large-scale disasters can quickly become international relief operations.

The death toll may still rise further. The UN aid chief warned that more bodies could be found, and the report noted that many of the missing could still be under rubble or cut off from services. The scale of the disaster, combined with the weakness of the state response, leaves little room for optimism that the totals are already final.

What is already clear is that Venezuela has suffered one of its worst earthquakes in more than a century. The reported losses extend beyond collapsed buildings to a system already under stress, with public health, shelter and sanitation now under severe pressure.

The damage estimate gives the economic scale of the disaster, but the more immediate picture is human. A high death toll, tens of thousands missing, and millions potentially affected make this not just a geology story but a long-term humanitarian emergency.