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On July 2, eight days after the double earthquake in Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez held a press conference for international media—the first of its kind in the country in years. During the conference, El País correspondent María Martín asked her about a government response that survivors described as slow and uncoordinated, with few officials and a lack of basic resources during the first few hours. Rodríguez rejected that account: “You’re making claims that the response was slow… our authorities were deployed immediately.” When faced with similar questions from other correspondents, she attributed the criticism to “media laboratories” and “narratives created to generate chaos.”
But this statement can be contrasted with some specific questions: When did the government provide information? What information did it provide? And, did that communication truly address the population’s needs during an emergency? To answer these questions, we monitored 41 state institutions with direct responsibilities during the crisis: ranging from the central government and the most affected localities to technical agencies, rescue, identification teams, and entities responsible for providing basic services.
The problem was not just the delay. Our monitoring reveals a fragmented institutional response in which, even when communication did occur, it often failed to guide the public: only 5 of the 41 institutions fully provided the information relevant to their role, while 21 limited themselves to propaganda-style posts, site visits, and expressions of gratitude without useful data, or simply remained silent.
Three months later, many of those gaps remain unfilled.
How long did it take the state to provide information?
The double earthquake struck at 6:04 p.m. on June 24, marking the highest-magnitude event recorded in Venezuela in over a century. In an emergency, the first few hours are critical for providing information on what happened, where to seek help, how to report missing persons, and which areas to avoid; therefore, the first criterion is not just whether messages were issued, but also when they arrived.
6:54 PM (50 minutes later)
Diosdado Cabello was the first official to make a declaration, and his remarks omitted the essentials: he did not provide complete information about the affected areas, noted that there was no exact information on the magnitude of the earthquake, and focused solely on Caracas.
9:40 PM (almost four hours later)
Delcy Rodríguez spoke nearly four hours after the earthquake, and she did not provide any figures regarding the hardest-hit state, La Guaira; she merely described it as “severely affected.” The first report containing balances about that state did not arrive until 12:04 a.m. the following day, June 25—nearly six hours after the natural disaster occurred—when it was declared an emergency area.
10:40 PM (almost five hours later)
Funvisis, the government agency responsible for monitoring seismic activity for prevention and communication regarding such threats, took nearly five hours to issue its first alert about the main earthquake, providing some data on its magnitude and location; however, that information had already been circulating since 6:18 p.m., reported first by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), not by the Venezuelan agency.
This initial delay is confirmed and exacerbated when looking at the 41 institutions studied. Only 6 of them (15%) issued any communication on the very day of the earthquakes; another 14 did so within the following 48 hours. The largest group, however, is the third one, comprising 21 institutions (more than half the total), which took three days or more to issue a statement, or simply never did so at all.
This last group includes agencies that are critical to the population during an emergency of this kind: entities such as the Scientific, Penal, and Criminal Investigations Corps (CICPC), the National Service of Medicine and Forensic Sciences (Senamecf), and the Public Ministry, which are essential for reporting missing and deceased persons, identifying victims, and providing guidance to family members; as well as ministries and institutions responsible for basic services and areas critical to the response, such as water, food, communications, and transportation.
The 41 institutions analyzed had functions directly related to emergency response and, therefore, specific information they were required to communicate in accordance with their respective responsibilities. Details on each agency studied, its role, and the expected information can be found here.
The problem wasn’t just when they spoke, but what they said
We compared each institution’s communications with the information they were required to provide based on their role (figures, protocols, balance sheets, technical alerts, lists, or guidelines) and classified them into three levels:
- Full compliance: if they fully met expectations (5 institutions, 12% of the total).
- Partial compliance: if they provided real data but it was incomplete, fragmented, or inconsistent (15 institutions, 37% of the total).
- Propaganda, gestures, or silence: if they only reported on tours, visits, or expressions of gratitude without useful information, or if they did not communicate anything at all (21 institutions, 51% of the total).
Only 1 in 8 institutions fully complied with the information expected of them given their role. More than half provided only propaganda without a single piece of actionable information for the public, or have not communicated anything at all to date—three months later.ic, or have not communicated anything at all to date—three months later.
In addition to the lack of a timely response, there was another key shortcoming: there was no single source where citizens could find, days or weeks later, organized, verifiable, and up-to-date official information about the emergency. For example, a review of institutional websites revealed that only 20 out of 41 institutions (49%) published anything about the earthquake; most did not post any information of their own on their websites.
The absence of official information also occurred amid restrictions on journalistic work. Following the earthquakes, access to La Guaira was subject to official registration and authorization; IPYS Venezuela documented obstacles to coverage in affected areas, and national and international freedom of expression organizations expressed concern about restrictions on journalists’ access, including that of foreign correspondents.
In addition, at the time of the disaster and during the months that followed, more than 90 media outlets remained blocked online, further limiting the ability to verify what had happened and document needs on the ground. Only recently have some of these restrictions begun to be lifted, although dozens of media outlets remain blocked.
Funvisis and La Guaira: Two Examples That Illustrate the Information Gap
During the emergency, there were two particularly important sources: Funvisis, to explain what was happening, and the La Guaira Governor’s Office, to report on what was happening in the most affected area. In both cases, the information arrived late or was insufficient.
At Funvisis, the delay in government communication during the first few hours —via its X account— was just the beginning. The report with all the official parameters did not appear on its channels until July 31, more than a month later, and the agency’s president did not issue a public statement until August 10 —47 days after the earthquakes—according to the record published on the institution’s website.
All of this occurred, moreover, amid a severe deterioration of its technical capacity. According to a report by the Human Rights Observatory at the University of Los Andes, the Venezuelan seismological network—which once had between 250 and 300 operational stations in the 1990s—had barely 3 to 5 active stations at the time of the earthquake; an infrastructure that, according to geophysicist Raúl Estévez, founder of the university’s Geophysics Laboratory, “disappeared because they didn’t provide resources” and caused the institution to remain silent at the most critical moment.
In La Guaira, another piece of information was missing: information about the territory. The state with the highest number of victims and collapsed buildings had the weakest communication of the five governorates analyzed. Its website did not publish (nor has it been published as of the date of this research, September 24) any information about the earthquake, and on its official Instagram account, the first post related to the emergency appeared more than 5 hours later, and it was a repost of a video by Delcy Rodríguez.
On Instagram as well, Governor José Alejandro Terán appeared nearly 9 hours later, but his first posts focused on expressing gratitude to the Presidency, reposts from Rodríguez’s account, and some tours, without offering a formal assessment of the situation or guidance for the public. The first in-depth interview in which he spoke about what had happened, including some rescue efforts, services, etc., came 18 days later.
His weekly YouTube show, where he used to summarize his administration’s work, aired for the last time three days before the earthquake and did not air again during the emergency. The channel did not resume activity until September, with a propaganda video and another on September 10: “La Guaira Reborn—A Story Told Through the Lens of Truth,” a piece in which officials and others reconstruct their version of what happened on June 24.
Funvisis and the La Guaira Governor’s Office summarize the general pattern: where there should have been technical, territorial, and verifiable information, there were delays, silence, or propaganda. Even some of the institutions most needed during the emergency failed to provide useful answers to the public when they needed them most.
Reporting in emergency situations is not about showcasing management
Various international standards—such as the United Nations Sendai Framework, the UNDRR guidelines, INSARAG, and the Sphere/CHS humanitarian standards—agree on a fundamental point: during an emergency, information must be provided early, be clear, and be useful for decision-making. In the first few hours, this means explaining what happened, identifying the main affected areas and risks, indicating where to seek help, and providing guidance on what to do. In the days that follow, this must be supplemented with updates on casualties and damage, rescue efforts, shelters, needs, and the status of basic services.
In Venezuela, much of that information was incomplete or ceased to be updated. The most recent overall tally was published by Jorge Rodríguez on Instagram on August 24: 6,509 dead, 6,462 rescued, and 226,696 people treated in hospitals. The data on missing persons is even more critical: on June 25, 157 people were reported missing, and that figure was never updated again. In the absence of an updated official registry, citizens created digital platforms to record missing persons and help family members locate them.
Three months later, there is still no public, comprehensive, and up-to-date assessment of the emergency. Information gaps persist regarding missing persons, damage, displaced people, basic services, and unmet needs. Added to this are the restrictions on the press and the blockades of independent media documented throughout much of this period, which limited other avenues for verifying what happened and effectively monitoring the government’s response.
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