The toll from the chain of quakes that began June 24 has passed 5,000. Before the collapsed houses can be rebuilt, climate agencies have issued an El Niño warning. Disasters do not wait their turn.
The death toll from Venezuela's successive earthquakes has surpassed 5,000, Kyunghyang Shinmun reported, with an El Niño warning further complicating conditions in the affected areas.
광고 문의 · 300×250The quakes struck Caracas and La Guaira on June 24. Early counts were in the hundreds, but as rubble was cleared and the missing identified, the toll climbed—past 3,500 in early July, past 4,700 by mid-month, and now beyond 5,000.
Why it keeps rising
Rising counts over weeks are not unusual after a major quake. Bodies under rubble are recovered late, some of the injured die, and the missing are reclassified as dead.
In Venezuela more than 1,200 aftershocks have followed, and already-damaged buildings have collapsed further, causing secondary casualties. International rescue teams began withdrawing once the window for finding survivors closed.
When El Niño overlaps
El Niño raises equatorial Pacific sea-surface temperatures and shifts rainfall patterns across northern South America. With displaced families in temporary tents, either downpours or an extreme dry spell translates immediately into sanitation and drinking-water problems.
Warnings about epidemic spread from collapsed water and medical services surfaced last week. Those killed by the earthquake and those killed by its aftermath appear in different statistics.
A third perspective
Sinophone Bridge Times is wary of the moment disaster reporting turns into arithmetic. Five thousand is larger than 4,700, but the difference is 300 individual deaths. The world's attention gathered in the first week and has moved on; what remains in Caracas now is not cameras but people who need water. Aid from China's government and from Chinese communities abroad is arriving at exactly this stage. The worth of relief shows not in week one but in week four.
