Updated July 3, 2026 at 7:50 AM EDT
CARABALLEDA, Venezuela — From the roof of a collapsed, 12-story building in the coastal town of Caraballeda, an American search-and-rescue team is digging down. Helping out this Tuesday are Venezuelan volunteers, several of whom are related to the three teenaged girls who are trapped in the debris.
"Keep scooping! Keep scooping! Keep scooping!" says one of the crew members, urging on those who are deep inside the structure, digging and removing debris.
People are still searching for survivors of last week's twin earthquakes that killed at least 2,595, according to the authorities' latest count, with tens of thousands still unaccounted for. The Venezuelan government has been slow to react, so much of the work has fallen to international rescue teams. Among them are members of the Los Angeles County Fire Department, which previously deployed to Nepal, Mexico and Turkey after earthquakes in those countries.
They've brought sniffer dogs, jackhammers, electric saws to cut through rebar, aluminum ladders, sonar and listening devices. When it's time to use them, a man with a bullhorn demands silence. Then, the rescue team tries to communicate with the victims.
"We go through a series of commands, telling them: 'If you can hear me, tap or knock twice, or three times,'" says LA fire Capt. Michael Toepfer. "What we're hearing is faint knocking, tapping. The last confirmation we had was about an hour ago."
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Although 24 to 72 hours is viewed as the key window of opportunity for rescuing survivors, Nichole Bosson, one of the team's doctors, says that under the right conditions, such as having access to food and water, victims can survive for longer periods.
"My first deployment was to Nepal. The U.S. aid teams had a rescue of a 14-year-old boy [after] five days," she says. Staring at the pile of rubble in front of her, she adds: "There's truly a real belief that we can still pull out live victims if we're able to get to them."
That's a big if.
Styrofoam mixed with the concrete
The girls were in apartment 908, three floors down from the roof. In addition, the building was part of a public housing project infamous for shoddy construction. When the June 24 earthquakes struck, the building pancaked and now broken pieces of walls and roof expose white Styrofoam that was mixed with the concrete.
During the quakes, the building was hit by another structure and twisted, making it even harder to navigate the ruins. At one point, Khaterine Roa, the mother of the three girls, climbs onto the roof to try to guide the team to the apartment. A few Venezuelan military officers show up to watch. But Roa says her government has mostly been absent.
By contrast, the LA firefighters, who arrived Monday and are part of the U.S. State Department's disaster response, have been working around the clock.
"I am very grateful that the Americans are making such a big effort to rescue my daughters," Roa says. "I just hope they're still alive."
Still, the disaster will test the U.S. government's commitment to Venezuela.
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U.S. ties with Venezuela
At a news conference Wednesday, John Barrett, the chargé d'affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, said the U.S. is leading the largest international earthquake response in Venezuela's history and that American assistance totals about $300 million. Besides search-and-rescue teams, the aid includes airlift and logistics capabilities as well as shelter, water and sanitation supplies.
"The magnitude of this tragedy has been matched by the magnitude of the U.S. response," Barrett said.
But in the wake of last year's shuttering of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which for decades was Washington's clearing house for disaster assistance, it's unclear how well Washington will be able to respond over the long term, says Orlando Pérez, a Latin America expert at the University of North Texas at Dallas.
The international response in Venezuela has also included help from Switzerland to Syria, Chile, Mexico, Jordan and many other countries.
But the U.S. now plays an outsize role in the beleaguered South American country, which has vast oil resources.
The Trump administration has been working closely with acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez, who replaced authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro after he was seized by U.S. forces in January. Rather than prioritizing a democratic transition, the White House has focused on getting the country's degraded oil industry back up and running and has fully backed Rodríguez, even though she has many pro-Maduro hard-liners in her government.
Now, in the wake of President Trump's controversial decision to attack Iran, Pérez says: "Trump needs Venezuela to be seen as a success."
Phil Gunson, who is based in Caracas for the International Crisis Group, a think tank focused on promoting peace and preventing wars, said that since Maduro was removed, the U.S. government has controlled the flow of Venezuela's oil revenue — the source of more than 90% of its export income — which makes Washington even more responsible for Venezuela's future.
At the collapsed building in Caraballeda, the team from LA is tunneling its way closer to the girls. One of their relatives, who has been removing debris from the tunnel, says they've found clothes, toys and a set of darts that belong to their family.
But the sun is going down and the ruins remain a confusing maze.
"There's another tower that fell into it. So, we're not sure if it's floor we're dealing with or ceiling. So, we have to cut through those layers in order to kind of get to where we think they're going," says Daniel Altruz, another LA firefighter. "We still have the tapping from the patient but it's just so hard to pinpoint their location."
Eventually, the sun goes down. The team keeps working but sometime after midnight the tapping sounds stop. Now, the focus will shift to recovering the girls' bodies.
But there has been a bit of good news.
Nearby, on Tuesday, a search team from Jordan rescued a 2-year-old boy who was trapped for six days in the rubble. He was taken to a hospital to recover.
And on Thursday, the State Department said rescuers from Los Angeles County, Miami and teams from different countries pulled another survivor to safety.
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