Venezuela Earthquakes

CORE, the Wayuu Taya Foundation, and Acceso have mobilized an urgent joint response after back-to-back earthquakes struck Caracas, Venezuela. Together, we’re assessing what impacted families need as they navigate sudden and incalculable loss.

CORE was recently featured on How to Help lists from the Associated Press, U.S. News & World Report, and NBCLA.

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WHAT WE KNOW

On June 24, twin earthquakes struck northern Venezuela within seconds of each other. The tremors, measuring 7.2 and 7.5 magnitudes, were the most powerful to hit the country in over a century. They’ve caused widespread outages, collapsed hundreds of buildings, and left entire communities in ruins.

While the full scope of impact is still emerging, the human toll is already heartbreaking. Families are searching for loved ones, and rescue teams are carefully sifting through rubble looking for survivors. The hardest-hit areas include some of Venezuela’s most densely populated communities, including Caracas, that were already vulnerable and struggling for resources before the earthquakes struck. Now, as they grapple with this loss, millions of people urgently need basics like food, water, medical supplies, and a safe place to stay to get through the days and weeks ahead.

How is CORE helping communities in Venezuela?

In coordination with our longtime partners, the Wayuu Taya Foundation and Acceso, we will work to safely clear rubble from the streets and help families get access to food, water, a safe place to sleep, and other essentials, with more support on the way as the situation evolves. The Wayuu Taya Foundation is a trusted humanitarian nonprofit that has worked for 25 uninterrupted years with Venezuela’s most vulnerable communities, including the Wayuu. Their deep roots in these communities mean we can move faster and reach more families in these critical next moments

Has CORE responded to
earthquakes before?

Earthquake relief and recovery work has been part of CORE’s DNA since our inception after the 2010 Haiti earthquake, which caused mass casualties and widespread devastation in Port-au-Prince. We understand how, between the seemingly endless piles of rubble and the sudden and incalculable loss of everything familiar, it can be difficult to even know where to begin. Just as we did then, CORE is equipped to support communities with the resources to stabilize in the immediate aftermath and recover over the long-term.

More recently, CORE responded to the Syria-Türkiye earthquake in 2023, which similarly devastated a region already dealing with fragile health systems and economic instability. We provided communities with cash assistance, food kits, and other critical items. We later expanded our program to give financial support to businessowners who’d lost nearly everything, including their ability to provide for their families.

Workers demolish a damaged building by hand in June 2013. Many neighborhoods in Port-au-Price have narrow, tight corridors, limiting access to heavy machinery. In these areas crews demolished earthquake-damaged homes with hand tools, one floor at a time, from top to bottom. J/P HRO maintained a robust engineering department that repaired and retrofitted homes where possible and demolished them when not.

Heavy machinery demolishes an earthquake damaged structure in Haiti’s Grand Anse Department following the 7.2 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti in August 2021. CORE launched an immediate response that provided emergency medical aid and mobilized heavy machinery to clear rubble and damaged structures.

Massive piles of rubble from a building that was destroyed in the 2023 Turkiye earthquake/

million people
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OF SYRIANS LIVE
BELOW THE
POVERTY LINE

What would it take for you to return to a home that tries to break you?

For Kinan, CORE’s Syria Manager, it’s the promise of waking up every morning to have a cup of coffee with his mom.

Read his story.

Kinan is an entrepreneur. An activist. A cook. A lifelong humanitarian. A Syrian exile.  

He’s also CORE’s Syria Manager. After fleeing Syria to escape persecution, Kinan spent 13 years in France building a life most people could only dream of. He earned advanced degrees in international economics and anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist fighting, held senior roles with international NGOs, built a network of friends and colleagues, opened a cafe, and indulged his love of art and culture.

But in October 2025, he left it all behind to reunite with his family and help shape his country’s future.

Looking back

In February 2023, catastrophic 7.8 and 7.5-magnitude earthquakes caused widespread devastation across Southern Türkiye and Northern Syria. The disaster exacerbated the already dire humanitarian crisis in Syria and displaced many families rebuilding their lives in Türkiye, which hosts the largest population of Syrian refugees.

Maisun is a mother of five, a baker, and a superhero to her children. Originally from Idlib, Maisun sadly lost her husband and one of her daughters to airstrikes in Syria. After being displaced three times within her country, each time fleeing with her remaining children in search of safety, she relocated her family to Türkiye.

CORE met Maisun in Mersin, where we gave her cash assistance to purchase essentials for her family.