Venezuela underwater: a chain of crises
Since 2024, Venezuela has been living through a sequence of natural disasters that has pushed the country to the limit of its capacity. What began with the rains associated with Hurricane Beryl in July 2024 continued with severe Andean floods in June 2025, worsened with the June 2026 earthquakes and erupted again in August with new floods in the capital and several states. These are not isolated events: they are chapters of the same growing climate and humanitarian crisis.
Extreme rainfall episodes recur year after year. And a country with infrastructure weakened by the economic crisis, without sufficient investment in prevention and with millions of people in vulnerable situations, cannot absorb blow after blow.
Hurricane Beryl: the first warning (July 2024)
Hurricane Beryl reached category 5 on July 1, 2024, after striking Grenada and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Its centre did not make landfall in Venezuela, but its rains battered the north-east of the country, especially Sucre state. On July 2, the Manzanares River burst its banks and swept through much of Cumanacoa: according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), as of July 8 there were six dead and three missing, some 29,000 people affected in 17 communities, 7,960 homes damaged and around 360 totally destroyed.
Affected families lost homes, crops, livestock and small businesses within hours. Many had to move in with relatives or to Cumaná, while others stayed in makeshift tents as the rainy season continued.
The 2025 rainy season: the Andean disaster
In late June 2025, the passage of tropical wave no. 9 brought the strongest rainfall episode of the season to the Venezuelan Andes. The Chama and Motatán rivers undermined stretches of the Trans-Andean highway, and floods and landslides hit Mérida, Trujillo, Táchira, Barinas and Portuguesa. On June 25, the government activated the "Andes 2025" emergency plan.
Mérida state was hit hardest: more than 15 road bridges destroyed and more than 8,000 families cut off by the destruction of roads and bridges, according to early reports. On July 2, the governor of Mérida put the number of directly or indirectly affected families at more than 24,000. The rains also claimed two lives, a father and son swept away by a swollen stream near Timotes.
A year later, many communities in the Mérida páramo were still calling for bridges and roads to be rebuilt. Entire families lost their homes, their livelihoods and their transport links.
The June 2026 earthquakes: when the earth shook too
Exactly one year after the Andean floods, on June 24, 2026, a double earthquake of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 struck central-northern Venezuela. With 6,509 deaths according to the official toll of August 24, 2026 — more than 7,000 according to independent counts — and economic damage of around $20 billion according to Swiss Re, it is the country's deadliest earthquake in more than a century.
La Guaira and Caracas were the hardest-hit areas, with collapsed buildings, destroyed roads and devastated basic service networks. More than 14,600 displaced people moved into makeshift camps. The country was only beginning to recover when the next blow came.
August 2026: no time to breathe
On the night of August 15, 2026, tropical wave no. 37 unleashed torrential rain on Caracas and the neighbouring states of Miranda and La Guaira. Two girls died after being swept away by the current in La Vega parish, and local media raised the death toll in the capital to three. Streams overflowed in La Vega, Antímano, Caricuao and Petare, and in Santa Rosalía parish some 115 families displaced by the earthquakes saw the water wreck the tents they were living in.
A week later, on August 22, tropical wave no. 40 brought new flooding: the Guaire and El Valle rivers overflowed in Caracas, and there was damage in Miranda, Aragua and Portuguesa. Early reports spoke of at least one death, several missing, around twenty injured on the Valle-Coche highway and some 150 homes affected in Guaicaipuro municipality. For communities still recovering from the earthquakes — with shored-up buildings, families in temporary housing and intermittent services — the August rains were one more blow.
Climate change as an amplifier
The series of disasters Venezuela is experiencing is no coincidence. The World Meteorological Organization has highlighted the rapid intensification of tropical cyclones such as Beryl and the increase in extreme rainfall among the features of the recent climate in Latin America and the Caribbean.
In Venezuela's case, other factors amplify the impact: deforestation of river basins reduces the land's natural capacity to absorb water, unplanned urbanisation places millions of people in risk zones — unstable hillsides, riverbanks, low-lying coastal areas — and poor maintenance of water infrastructure makes floods worse.
Where to help
Venezuela's crisis calls for a response that combines immediate action with long-term reconstruction. This is where international solidarity can make a difference.
Organisations on the ground. The Venezuelan Red Cross, Caritas Venezuela and various local NGOs work on emergency care, food distribution and housing reconstruction. Before donating, it is worth checking that the organisation reports transparently on how funds are used.
Donation Pool. Any person or organisation can create a campaign on the platform to mobilise support for communities affected by the climate crisis in Venezuela.
How to contribute. Every donation, whatever its size, can fund concrete action: a food kit for a cut-off family, building materials for a destroyed home, medicines for a community without access to healthcare. Transparent management of funds and tracking the impact of each contribution are essential.
Lessons we cannot ignore
Venezuela's crisis shows that natural disasters are not isolated events but chained processes. Beryl's rains hit the east of the country, the 2025 rains destroyed infrastructure in the Andes, the 2026 earthquakes devastated the north-centre and the August rains hampered recovery. Each event feeds the next, and resilience runs out.
Adapting to climate change is not an abstract option: it is an urgent necessity that requires investment in resilient infrastructure, early warning systems, watershed reforestation and land-use planning. Meanwhile, citizen solidarity — channelled transparently and effectively — is the bridge between empathy and concrete action that can save lives and rebuild communities.