www.nytimes.com/live/2026/06/24/world/venezuela-earthquake
The press will now converge on Venezuela. It’s only human after all in a disaster. What will matter most though, is when they are there, the world will pay attention to the Venezuelan people in their dire hour of need?
In the past hour the NYT has reported 3 deaths and the California Post has estimated 100,000 deaths. Given the construction materials and location of the quake it could easily surpass 100,000 casualties. Hopefully the teams being deployed are ready for the true conditions.
This is a time when state space models are critical and I will somehow contemplate finding the time to make one. We should have had them before though. God willing somebody had already planned for it integrating dynamics into hazard estimates and response planning with contingencies and uncertainties baked in.
Top of mind, along with how supplies and support could meaningfully be deployed in an environment with a wall of costal high rise hotels teetering on collapse and damaged ports and airports and clearly no help ahead of time from allies with census and planning, how the rescue invasion is going to managed.
Yes there is all this costal oil right. I can’t even speculate on state of it now. Just wondering.
Certainly , if there is oil then a real recovery is feasible. Can’t do it all though. How are we going to get rich and rebuild Venezuela so this never happens again? Probably can’t do both. If earlier NYT reporting is correct, and usually it is, there are already many discrepancies already between Venezuelan reserves flowing to Venezuela’s infrastructure. If our press is going there now, show us the truth. Tell the Venezuelan people what their real odds are. Tell the world too. Will their oil save them, definitely not if they don’t directly benefit from it.
Every catastrophe is a chance to prevent the next. It’s hard not to think back to Haiti right now, I really hope the people of Venezuela suffer less and of course if there is to be a rebuilding and recovery then conditions must be better than they were before.