Venezuela's quake toll reaches 235 as rescuers dig by hand in La Guaira

It took less than a minute. Two earthquakes, magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5, struck within seconds of each other off Venezuela's Caribbean coast on Wednesday evening. Two days on, soldiers, firefighters and volunteers are still pulling at the rubble in and around Caracas, and in the port city of La Guaira, many are doing it with their hands.

The government now puts the death toll at at least 235, with more than 4,300 injured, and officials expect both numbers to climb. The figures come from Health Minister Carlos Alvarado and acting President Delcy Rodríguez; an unofficial website tracking the missing has listed tens of thousands of names, but authorities have not confirmed it, and that gap between fear and confirmation is its own kind of cruelty for families waiting.

To understand why this one cut so deep, geography helps. Strong quakes are relatively rare along this stretch of the Venezuelan coast. The U.S. Geological Survey placed the first shock near San Felipe, roughly 284 kilometres west of the capital, and the second near Yumare moments later. The last comparable event near Caracas was in 1967, a magnitude 6.7 quake that killed more than 200 people. A generation of construction has gone up since then.

The worst of it is in La Guaira, the seaport that funnels goods and travellers to Caracas. Dozens of buildings there have collapsed. Satellite images taken before and after show apartment blocks simply gone. With heavy machinery in short supply, residents have been digging for neighbours using shovels, hammers and whatever they could carry from home.

"We need all doctors and nurses to report to their places of work. We must take care of everyone who is arriving at emergency rooms."

Delcy Rodríguez, Venezuela's acting president, in a televised address

Rodríguez has declared a nationwide state of emergency. The main international airport is closed after damage to its terminal roof, schools will stay shut for the rest of the week, and residents are being told to avoid buildings that may have been weakened. The USGS, using predictive modelling rather than confirmed counts, has warned the final toll could run well into the thousands, one reason aid is being mobilised on a scale larger than the current 235 suggests.

That help is arriving from several directions. Mexico, Chile and El Salvador, countries with their own hard-earned experience of catastrophic quakes, are sending rescue teams and supplies. The United States has pledged search crews from Virginia and California along with aerial imagery of hard-to-reach coastal areas, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the priority for now is search and rescue.

The diplomacy is delicate. Relations between Washington and Caracas have been raw since former leader Nicolás Maduro was seized in a U.S. operation in January, and aid is flowing across that strain. It lands on a country whose hospitals were short of medicine and equipment before any building fell, whose power supply was already unreliable, whose recovery had barely begun. This is the same La Guaira and the same Caracas that featured in our first report as the quakes struck; what has changed in two days is not the fragility but the count.