The U.S. has announced what appears to be one of its strongest responses to a natural disaster since the dismantling of its premier aid agency, USAID.
Speaking to the press during his trip to the Gulf, Secretary of State Marco Rubio promised: "We have a whole-of-government response. It'll be big; it'll be fast; and it'll be effective."
The U.S. effort includes a commitment to allocate $150 million to faith-based aid groups like Samaritan's Purse and Catholic Relief Services, and two United Nations agencies: the World Food Programme and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
In addition, the U.S. is deploying a Disaster Assistant Response Team and two search and rescue teams from Virginia and California to help with locating survivors. The Virginia team will include 80 people and 6 dogs. The California team includes 70 people and 6 dogs.
The administration has also tapped the Pentagon to help with getting U,S. government staff and critical supplies into the country, as some of the airport infrastructure in Venezuela has been damaged.
A notable shift
The Venezuela response represents a significant shift from the Trump administration response to the earthquake in Myanmar in March of 2025, which killed over 3,500 people: $9 million and three people to assess the damage but no search-and-rescue team. By contrast, China sent $137 million in aid to Myanmar.
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"This clearly reflects some lessons that [the administration] learned after the failure to deploy a search and rescue team to Myanmar," says Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International and head of USAID's disaster response during the Obama administration. He told NPR: "There was definitely a period last year when they had lost the capability to deploy a search and rescue team in the DOGE destruction of USAID. It was very visible and very embarrassing."
Since then, the State Department has quietly hired back some of USAID's humanitarian response staff and also reinstated some of the contracts with groups that provide assistance in disasters, including search and rescue teams.
The Trump administration has also made it clear it's prioritizing help for countries of geopolitical interest. And the administration is invested in Venezuela after toppling its authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro.
Konyndyk says this moment will be a test for this administration and its abilities to match the work of USAID, both in terms of how quickly it can get teams on the ground and the longer-term response. USAID made major commitments to disaster recovery efforts after the 3-to-4 day period of rescue operations in the wake of the catastrophe.
"The administration clearly wants to avoid a black eye of not deploying a robust immediate response, but whether they will sustain the kind of follow through that can save lives in the months that follow, I think that's an open question," he says.
"I would want to see deployment of emergency medical teams to stabilize the health system after an earthquake like this. I would want to see investments in restoring water infrastructure and other basic infrastructure that's been damaged. So, I think that's something that will be very important to watch over the next few months," Konyndyk says.
What's needed
And there's a lot of work ahead. The damage in Venezuela is "very, very severe," according to Cesar Jimenez, a Venezuelan national who is managing the response for the aid group Project Hope in Venezuela, with a focus on supporting local health systems.
Jimenez and his team visited two healthcare facilities in La Guaira, which was in the epicenter of the second earthquake.
"And they're totally collapsed. We saw people laying in the ground with no beds, being assessed by health staff. We saw like 200 people in one tiny healthcare facility seeking help," he says.
"We are doing our best as Venezuelans to support our people. This is a unique moment in our history, because we were not prepared for this. Nobody saw this coming, and we need a lot of support," Jimenez says, adding that the chaos in the wake of the quakes –- the most powerful the country has seen since 1900 – has endangered lives.
Jimenez says local authorities and aid groups should also develop measures to prevent injuries and death if there are additional earthquakes.
That was a priority for USAID. After the earthquakes in Nepal in 2015 and in Turkey and Syria in 2023, their staff advised local authorities on safe building codes and preparing and placing response and extraction kits.
"The most lifesaving thing that can be done in an earthquake scenario is the work that is done beforehand not the work that is done after live rescues," Konyndyk says.
"I do hope that the administration will invest in that work in Venezuela on the back end of this earthquake, as the U.S. did through USAID and many other countries over the years."
NPR has reached out to the State Department for more details on the U.S. response in Venezuela.
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