On June 22, La Guaira was still an entire city, with the buildings lined up along the coast, the regular roofs and the blue of the Caribbean Sea as a backdrop. Three days later, from the same orbital observation point, those buildings are no longer there, in their place only piles of rubble, chasms and the sad, uniform gray of the rubble. Separating the two images there is just over half a minute of tremors, those that hit northern Venezuela on the evening of Wednesday 24 June and which the US Geological Survey recorded as the most powerful seismic sequence to hit the country in over a century.
The contrast is documented by satellite photographs released by Vantor, the American space intelligence company which until October 2025 was called Maxar, the same operator whose images, in 2022, showed the world the Russian military convoy marching towards Kiev. The shots taken by the satellites of the WorldView constellation are truly terrible, because they show the pre- and post-earthquake situation.
What the pictures show
In the footage of June 25th, entire blocks were razed to the ground: hotels, large warehouses, dozens of residential buildings. In some frames there are traces of fire, consistent with the intervention of the firefighters in the hours following the two tremors. A United Nations humanitarian agency spoke of over one hundred buildings collapsed in La Guaira alone, the damage toll then extended to 250 structures between Caraballeda and Playa Larga.
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Vantor distributes this material through the Open Data Program, the channel through which the company releases satellite images of the before and after of major disasters for free under a Creative Commons license, so that rescuers, non-governmental organizations and editorial staff can use them without waiting.
The toll continues to rise
The numbers are provisional, and grow with each update. Health Minister Carlos Alvarado reported around 235 dead and over 4,300 injured as of 7pm on June 25, after the National Assembly’s first tally had stopped at 188 dead, 1,520 injured and 157 missing. The authorities warn that the figure is destined to worsen: the USGS PAGER model estimates a concrete probability that the final count will exceed thousands of victims.
Interim President Delcy Rodríguez declared a state of national emergency, closed Caracas airport due to damage to the terminal roof, suspended trains and ordered the mobilization of heavy vehicles. Rescue teams, soldiers and volunteers continue to dig with their bare hands and with makeshift tools among the rubble of La Guaira and the capital. Several countries with experience in seismic matters, such as Mexico, Chile and El Salvador, have sent teams and medical material; the United States also announced the dispatch of rescuers and aerial images to assess the damage in the most isolated coastal areas. The earthquake comes at the worst time for a country already caught in a political and financial crisis, marked earlier this year by the capture of President Nicolás Maduro by US forces.
