The death toll in Venezuela’s twin earthquake disaster reached 1,430 on Saturday, with millions more feared to lack sanitation and other basic needs as the first US aid flights trickled into Caracas.

Facing public outrage at the response by local officials, US-backed interim Venezuelan leader Delcy Rodriguez said the country was “not alone”.

The United States said one runway at Simon Bolivar International Airport was now functioning and that C-17 US military planes were landing there, while a naval ship had arrived off the coast.

The UN humanitarian agency OCHA said search-and-rescue teams from at least 17 countries were being mobilised to help find survivors.

But the search for survivors saw desperate attempts by local residents to claw away rubble from apartment buildings that collapsed in Wednesday’s double-quakes. Experts say the first 72 hours after natural disasters are the key, narrow window for finding the living.

There was joy in the hardest-hit coastal area of La Guaira, north of Caracas, when locals pulled an infant alive out of the wreckage on Friday, some 32 hours after the magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 tremors.

Earlier today, the Venezuelan government said that 1,600 members of foreign rescue teams had arrived to help search for survivors of the devastating twin earthquakes.

Residents and volunteers in La Guaira, a popular destination for beachgoers where at least 100 buildings, many residential high-rises, were destroyed or damaged, have for days decried shortages of heavy equipment and a limited official presence.

Rodriguez said in an overnight address on state television that 10 more countries were still to join rescue efforts and 14,000 military and police members were in La Guaira to patrol and take sanitary measures.

“In recent hours, Venezuela has received 17 flights carrying more than 1,600 members of rescue teams, and over the next 24 hours, the arrival of 25 additional flights is expected,” said foreign ministry official Oliver Blanco.

“We thank the international community for its support and solidarity during these moments of uncertainty for Venezuelans,” Blanco added on X in the early hours of Saturday.

Rescuers have been making their way to sites around La Guaira state and Venezuela’s capital Caracas, although on Friday some areas were still largely without an official presence as families and neighbours struggled to find missing loved ones in the rubble, sometimes digging with their hands.

Officials closed the road between La Guaira and nearby Caracas on Friday evening, saying heavy traffic was preventing quick passage of emergency vehicles and official rescuers.

Civilians who are not part of official rescue teams will need a credential to pass the roadblock and Reuters witnesses were prevented from using the main road on Saturday morning by police, while an older secondary road was choked with traffic.

The government had previously thanked civilians who brought aid, often by motorcycle, to desperate residents. Venezuelan state television showed images of thousands of pairs of shoes, clothing and other aid being collected by the government.

While the power remained out near the quakes’ epicentre in Moron on Friday, as well as fully down in La Guaira, it was being restored in other places, with Rodriguez saying that 60 per cent of electricity had now been restored.

Venezuela’s power grid, crippled by years of underinvestment and economic sanctions, regularly experiences problems, leading to daily, hours-long blackouts in some regions.

54,000 missing

Although the government has said hundreds are missing or trapped, more than 54,000 people are listed as unaccounted for on a website promoted by the country’s opposition.

The US Geological Survey (USGS) estimated more than 10,000 deaths were possible from the magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 quakes, which would place them among Latin America’s deadliest of the last century.

Nearly 7 million people could be affected, the UN said, estimating direct damage at about $6.7 billion.

The disaster could have political consequences for Rodriguez, who has tried to portray herself as an agent of change even though she served as vice president to Nicolas Maduro, who was ousted and arrested by the US in January.

Rodriguez spoke by phone with US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Friday after meeting with the US military’s Northern Command and disaster experts.

The US said it was mobilising $150m in aid and easing sanctions, while its military dispatched two ships and said helicopters and aircraft would support rescue efforts.

Among the rescue teams working in La Guaira are a team from El Salvador, whose President Nayib Bukele has hailed multiple rescues on his X account, including that of a 15-year-old girl.

Looting has taken place at several sites in La Guaira, Reuters witnesses said.

Venezuela’s oil production was not affected by the quakes, Oil Minister Paula Henao said on Friday, adding that fuel distribution would be guaranteed. Oil executives and workers said the sector had avoided major infrastructure damage.

Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem rejected a U.S.-brokered security agreement between Lebanon and Israel on Saturday a day after it was signed, describing it as a surrender to Israel.

In the latest example of ongoing hostilities despite repeated ceasefires and agreements, Israel launched a drone strike in Lebanon’s south.

More than a million Lebanese have been driven from their homes by a conflict that has run in parallel with the wider Iran war.

Hezbollah and Iran say Washington pledged to end hostilities in Lebanon as part of its memorandum of understanding signed two weeks ago to end the wider war.

The framework agreed on Friday provides for a phased Israeli withdrawal from some parts of southern Lebanon, alongside the deployment of the Lebanese army. But Israeli forces would be permitted to remain in an expanded security zone for the time being, pending further implementation.

In a statement, Qassem called it “null and void”, and accused the Lebanese government of making unilateral concessions and undermining Lebanon’s sovereignty.

He criticised provisions linking Israel’s withdrawal to Hezbollah’s disarmament, saying they effectively legitimized Israel’s military presence and crossed “all red lines”.

The group would continue its armed resistance, he added: “We did not leave the battlefield in the most difficult circumstances, and we will not leave it.”

Lebanon’s state news agency said an Israeli drone struck Nabatieh al-Fawqa on Saturday. The area is outside the security zone shown on a map published by Israel of the territory its troops will continue to control.

The Israeli military told Reuters it had carried out the strike, using a drone because it had no troops in the immediate area. It said it targeted an individual who posed a threat to its forces, without giving further details or evidence.

Qassem said the Iran-U.S. memorandum of understanding reached earlier this month, which guarantees Lebanon’s territorial integrity, should serve as the basis for ending the conflict, rather than Friday’s Washington agreement.

Many social media users in Venezuela have reported receiving alerts on Android smartphones moments before Wednesday’s quake that left over 900 confirmed dead.

Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS both include the option to display government alerts for emergencies like earthquakes.

But the search giant last year also detailed its system that uses the billions of Android smartphones worldwide to detect earthquakes in the first place.

How it works

Almost all smartphones contain an accelerometer, a movement sensor used for tasks like flipping the screen when users turn it sideways.

That same sensor “can also detect the ground shaking from an earthquake,” Google wrote in a July 2025 blog post.

Accelerometers can spot potential earthquakes’ fast-moving initial “P” wave, sending information about the tremor to a Google server.

By rapidly cross-referencing many such reports, the system can “confirm that an earthquake is happening and estimate its location and magnitude,” Google said.

“The goal is to warn as many people as possible before the slower, more damaging S-wave of an earthquake reaches them”.

Google offers two stages of alerts.

“BeAware” warns of weaker tremors, while for the heaviest quakes, “TakeAction” takes over the screen and plays a loud sound even when the phone is on silent mode.

How effective is the system?

Google said last year that its systems had already sent 790 million alerts to individual phones, warning of over 2,000 potentially dangerous earthquakes detected from April 2021.

While that gives many more people than before access to early warning information, there have been hiccups.

Android phones failed to sound warnings ahead of devastating February 2023 earthquakes that killed almost 60,000 people across Turkey and Syria.

Google said last year that it has since updated its algorithms to avoid a repeat.

The company also apologised in February 2025 for a false alarm sent to some Android users in Brazil.

This week in Venezuela, hundreds of people have posted praise for Google on X, with some including unverified videos of alerts prompting people to leave buildings.

What about Apple?

Beyond government warnings, Apple says on its website that users in the US and Taiwan can also receive alerts from other “alert originators” about earthquakes.

The company did not respond to AFP’s questions about how that system works by time of publication.

Neither has the iPhone giant enlisted its users’ phones for a distributed detection system like Google’s.

The hundreds of millions of iPhones around the globe are, however, able to forward alerts they receive to other nearby Apple devices that do not have mobile reception or a WiFi connection — potentially helping life-saving warnings to get through.