Following Venezuela's earthquakes, roads are clearing, shortening the commute from Caracas to La Guaira, but this quietness signals a potential fading of global attention to the ongoing humanitarian crisis. While search and rescue operations continue, the nation is entering a recovery phase where rebuilding lives, particularly for displaced children who lack education and psychosocial support, is a critical, long-term challenge, exacerbated for girls by increased risks of violence and exploitation. Lessons learned highlight the centrality of communities in response efforts, the life-saving impact of disaster preparedness and robust infrastructure, and the opportunity to rebuild better and safer, with the ultimate success measured by preventing future risks. Organizations like Plan International are providing essential aid, including child protection and specialized services for girls and women, emphasizing that recovery extends beyond physical reconstruction to preserving children's fundamental needs for play, laughter, dreams, and belief in a better future, even as families face profound loss and uncertainty, demonstrating enduring hope and love through their persistent search for loved ones and mutual support.

Following Venezuela's earthquakes, roads are clearing, shortening the commute from Caracas to La Guaira, but this quietness signals a potential fading of global attention to the ongoing humanitarian crisis. While search and rescue operations continue, the nation is entering a recovery phase where rebuilding lives, particularly for displaced children who lack education and psychosocial support, is a critical, long-term challenge, exacerbated for girls by increased risks of violence and exploitation. Lessons learned highlight the centrality of communities in response efforts, the life-saving impact of disaster preparedness and robust infrastructure, and the opportunity to rebuild better and safer, with the ultimate success measured by preventing future risks. Organizations like Plan International are providing essential aid, including child protection and specialized services for girls and women, emphasizing that recovery extends beyond physical reconstruction to preserving children's fundamental needs for play, laughter, dreams, and belief in a better future, even as families face profound loss and uncertainty, demonstrating enduring hope and love through their persistent search for loved ones and mutual support.

Following Venezuela's earthquakes, roads are clearing, shortening the commute from Caracas to La Guaira, but this quietness signals a potential fading of global attention to the ongoing humanitarian crisis. While search and rescue operations continue, the nation is entering a recovery phase where rebuilding lives, particularly for displaced children who lack education and psychosocial support, is a critical, long-term challenge, exacerbated for girls by increased risks of violence and exploitation. Lessons learned highlight the centrality of communities in response efforts, the life-saving impact of disaster preparedness and robust infrastructure, and the opportunity to rebuild better and safer, with the ultimate success measured by preventing future risks. Organizations like Plan International are providing essential aid, including child protection and specialized services for girls and women, emphasizing that recovery extends beyond physical reconstruction to preserving children's fundamental needs for play, laughter, dreams, and belief in a better future, even as families face profound loss and uncertainty, demonstrating enduring hope and love through their persistent search for loved ones and mutual support.

Caracas-La Guaira: What happens after the roads clear

The drive from Caracas to La Guaira took just forty minutes this morning. Just two weeks ago, in the chaotic aftermath of the earthquakes, the same journey took more than four hours as roads filled with emergency vehicles, families searching for loved ones and people fleeing the worst-hit areas.

For most of us, a shorter commute would be welcome news. Here, the silence feels unsettling. Perhaps it is a sign that the response has become more organised. Or perhaps it tells a different story: that Venezuela's twin earthquakes are already fading from global attention.

Humanitarian crises rarely end when the headlines disappear. They simply become quieter. The cameras leave long before the suffering does.

I was travelling with colleagues from Plan International as we work alongside partner organisations to expand assistance for children and families affected by the earthquakes.

As the city gave way to the coast, my colleague Isaac Moya recalled his first journey into the disaster zone, hours after the earthquakes. "The roads were full," he said. "Hundreds of trucks. Ambulances. Fire engines. Volunteers. Relief convoys. Everything had stopped."

Today, traffic had eased.

Search and rescue operations continue, but Venezuela is entering a new phase of the response. As international attention begins to move elsewhere, communities in La Guaira are starting the long process of rebuilding their lives.

But for the families who survived, the full impact of the earthquake is only beginning to emerge. Homes can be rebuilt. Roads can reopen. But rebuilding a childhood disrupted by loss and uncertainty is far harder. While roads are reopening and debris is being cleared, thousands of children remain displaced, out of school, and in need of protection and psychosocial support. For girls, displacement and overcrowding can increase the risk of violence and exploitation.

Survivors need shelter, food, clean water, health care and protection. Children need safe spaces, education and psychosocial support, while girls and women need specialised services to reduce the risk of violence and exploitation.

 Lessons from La Guaira

The first sign of the earthquake's impact was a temporary camp. Then a temporary morgue. Then kilometre after kilometre of destruction.

Along the coastline, whole neighbourhoods had been flattened. Where family homes once stood, there were only piles of shattered concrete and mangled steel. It was difficult to reconcile the devastation before us with the lives that had unfolded there just weeks earlier, children playing, families celebrating birthdays, parents saying goodnight before bed. We stopped at a camp where around 280 people are living. Nearly half are children.

Inside the camp, life continues because it must. At first light, older residents were up early and moving between hospitals for any scrap of information and waiting desperately for news from rescue teams. Children have lost their homes, schools, books and toys. They have also lost the routines that help them feel safe.

Yet what struck me most was not what people had lost. It was what they refused to leave behind. Many families have refused to leave the area and have chosen to remain near collapsed buildings as relatives are still missing beneath the rubble. Leaving would feel like giving up. Hope, I realised, can survive beneath mountains of concrete.

Passing the temporary morgue was a stark reminder that emergency response is about more than saving lives. It is also about helping families recover loved ones and grieve with dignity.

As we travelled deeper into La Guaira, the earthquake revealed itself in layers. Buildings had collapsed like houses of cards. Entire apartment blocks had folded into themselves. Streets had simply ceased to exist. Nature had reshaped the landscape in seconds.

Almost two weeks on, everyone understands the painful truth. The likelihood of finding survivors beneath the rubble grows smaller with each passing day.

The firefighters know it. The families know it. Yet every day they return. Because hope is not driven by odds or logic. It is driven by love.

Among everyone we met, the local firefighters left the strongest impression. Their uniforms were covered in dust. They looked exhausted after days of relentless work.

One firefighter told us they had worked almost continuously for nearly six hundred hours. He was not complaining. He was simply describing the weight of hope. Their experience highlighted three lessons for recovery.

First, communities are at the centre of every response. Neighbours, volunteers and local responders are often the first to act and the last to leave.

Second, disaster preparedness saves lives. While earthquakes cannot be prevented, stronger infrastructure and effective emergency planning can significantly reduce their impact.

Third, disasters offer an opportunity to build better and safer. Schools, homes and public services must be rebuilt with future risks in mind. The greatest measure of success will not be what we rebuild, but whose lives are never put at risk again. The lives they save may belong to children we will never meet.

What children need to recover

Many affected families are living outside organised camps. Reaching them requires strong coordination, local leadership and sustained international support.

Plan International is working with partners to provide emergency relief, child protection, mental health and psychosocial support, education, dignity kits, and specialised services for girls and women.

Because recovery is about more than physical reconstruction. Every child needs something that disasters should never take away. The chance to play. To laugh. To dream. To believe that tomorrow can still be better than today.

"From the very first day, children need psychosocial support, says my colleague Yesica Serrano, a child protection specialist with Plan International. “An earthquake may last only minutes, but if children's distress is left unaddressed, its effects can last much longer.” 

“Girls face additional risks during displacement, so their protection and specific needs must be an absolute priority”, she added.

The grandmother who stayed

Before leaving, I met a grandmother whose story has stayed with me.

The earthquake destroyed her home. She now lives in a temporary shelter.

Her daughter had taken her nine-month-old baby to stay elsewhere after the child became ill during days of heavy rain. But she remained. Her son is still beneath a collapsed building nearby. Looking towards the ruins, she explained why she could not leave.

"I cannot leave him," she said. There was no anger in her voice. No drama. Only love. Her words captured something statistics never can. Across La Guaira, families are living with uncertainty, grief and loss. Yet they continue to search, support one another and rebuild. The rescue effort is not over, but the longer task of recovery is already underway. As global attention shifts elsewhere, affected communities will need sustained support long after the headlines fade.

(The author is a global humanitarian director at Plan International)

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of THE WEEK.

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