The grim toll of Venezuela's catastrophic earthquake continues to mount, but a rare glimmer of hope emerged today as rescue workers pulled two young boys alive from the wreckage after they had been trapped for more than three days. Sources close to the rescue operation confirm the children, aged eight and eleven, were found in a pocket beneath a collapsed school in the hard-hit city of Cumaná. The rescue came as the official death count surpassed 2,500, with thousands more missing in what is shaping up to be one of the deadliest seismic events in the region's history.
The boys, identified only as José and Miguel, were dehydrated but conscious when they were extracted shortly before dawn by a team of international rescuers. Video footage obtained by this newsroom shows the moment a concrete slab was lifted to reveal the pair, their faces caked in dust, blinking in the sudden daylight. Neither appeared to have suffered critical injuries, a near miracle given the devastation that has levelled entire neighbourhoods.
But the rescue stands in stark contrast to the broader catastrophe unfolding across the nation's northern coast. Uncovered documents from the state-run oil company PDVSA reveal that emergency response funds intended for disaster preparedness were diverted to other projects as far back as 2019. The diversion of resources raises uncomfortable questions about how prepared the government of President Nicolás Maduro truly was for such an event.
Meanwhile, the humanitarian crisis deepens. Hospitals already struggling with shortages of medicine are now overwhelmed. A doctor at the main hospital in Cumaná, speaking on condition of anonymity, told this reporter: "We are running out of basic supplies. No bandages. No anaesthesia. We are performing amputations with just local numbing agent." The doctor's voice cracked as he described a makeshift morgue that has run out of space, bodies now being stored in a refrigerated truck donated by a local fishing company.
The Maduro administration has publicly accepted offers of aid from several nations, including the United States, but sources within the aid community say bureaucratic red tape is delaying the delivery of critical supplies. "The government wants to control everything," a UN logistics officer told me. "But their capacity is shot. It's a recipe for more suffering."
International rescue teams from Mexico, Spain and Russia have been deployed, but the sheer scale of the destruction is overwhelming. More than 200 aftershocks have hampered search efforts. In the town of Cumana, a secondary school that once held 400 children is now a graveyard of twisted steel and concrete. Rescue workers say they have heard no sounds of life from the rubble in two days.
For the families of the missing, the wait is a special kind of torture. Maria Isabel Rojas, whose 14-year-old daughter is still trapped somewhere beneath the same school as José and Miguel, stood at the cordon line watching the rescue. "I thought it was my girl they were pulling out. My heart stopped," she told me, tears streaming down her face. "God willing, they will find my niña too."
But time is running out. Experts say survival rates drop dramatically after 72 hours without water. The UN has warned that the window for finding more survivors is closing fast. The effort now is likely to shift from rescue to recovery.
As night falls on Cumaná, the smell of dust and decay hangs heavy in the air. The two boys are safe, but the tragedy of Venezuela's earthquake will be measured in the thousands who were not so fortunate. And the question that haunts every relief worker and every Venezuelan is this: could some of that loss have been prevented with the funds that were siphoned away? In a country where the powerful rarely face accountability, that question may never have an answer.
