At 6:04 pm on 24 June 2026, northern Venezuela was hit by two earthquakes 39 seconds apart: a magnitude 7.2 foreshock and a magnitude 7.5 mainshock, the strongest to strike the country since 1900. A week later, nearly 2,000 people are confirmed dead, more than 10,000 are injured, and tens of thousands are reported missing. Hundreds of buildings collapsed across Caracas and several states, and La Guaira alone reported more than 1,400 structures destroyed or damaged, along with serious damage to Simón Bolívar International Airport.
The boundary between the Caribbean and South American plates does not stop at Venezuela's coast. Its eastern branch runs toward Trinidad and Tobago, which lies about 11 km from Venezuela at the closest point, and related fault structures lie near Aruba, Curaçao and Bonaire. People in Port of Spain, Oranjestad, Willemstad and Kralendijk felt the shaking, and tsunami advisories were briefly issued for Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands before being cancelled. This piece covers what AI can and cannot do to prepare the region for a quake closer to home.
What happened in Venezuela
Two large shocks within a minute did more damage than one. Buildings weakened by the foreshock fell in the mainshock, and people who had run outside and then gone back in were caught. Damage spread across Caracas and the states of La Guaira, Trujillo, Carabobo, Aragua and Miranda.
Estimates of the missing range from 43,000 to 50,000, depending on the source. A spread that wide shows how weak the record-keeping is: families have built their own crowdsourced lists of names and last known locations because no single official system tracks them. The United States has sent more than 900 military personnel, rescue teams from several countries are working alongside Venezuelan crews, and aftershocks, including a strong one in Caracas, have repeatedly forced teams to pull back from damaged buildings.
Why the same plate boundary puts Trinidad and the ABC islands at risk
Along northern Venezuela, the Caribbean plate slides east past the South American plate on strike-slip faults, similar in type to California's San Andreas. That boundary continues east past the Paria peninsula toward Trinidad, and the Leeward Antilles, Aruba, Curaçao and Bonaire, sit on a related offshore ridge within the same broad zone. Trinidad has a recorded history of earthquakes, and shaking from 24 June was reported as far as Brazil's Amazon region, about 1,700 km away.
Building codes, public earthquake education and emergency plans vary widely across these territories. Port of Spain, like Bridgetown and Kingston, has older buildings put up before modern seismic codes or where enforcement was patchy. A quake of this size under a Caribbean capital is a real possibility, not a thought experiment.
What drones and sensors are doing in Venezuela's rescue
UN aid chief Tom Fletcher said micro drones, which rescuers call "cockroach drones," are searching inside partly collapsed buildings in Caracas and La Guaira, in spaces too small or unstable for people and dogs. Thermal sensors pick up body heat under rubble so crews dig where survivors are most likely. The US military has flown MQ-9 Reaper drones to map the extent of damage for Venezuelan authorities.
Most of this capability arrived with international teams after the quake, days into a rescue window that shrinks by the hour. A small island facing the same event without its own equipment or a standing arrangement to borrow it would wait just as long.
Earthquake early warning: what it can and cannot do
No method, AI or otherwise, can reliably predict when and where a particular earthquake will strike. Early warning is different. A rupture sends out fast, weaker P-waves first and slower, more damaging S-waves after. Sensors that detect the P-waves can send an alert before the strong shaking arrives, giving a few seconds to tens of seconds depending on distance from the epicentre. Close to the epicentre, the warning may be zero.
Mexico's SASMEX and Japan's national system have used this for years to stop trains, shut gas valves, halt lifts and get people under cover. Google's Android Earthquake Alerts system uses the motion sensors in ordinary Android phones as a crowd-sourced network, with software that recognises the signature of an earthquake and warns nearby phones. It needs no new national sensor network, but Google switches it on country by country.
The UWI Seismic Research Centre in St Augustine, Trinidad, runs more than 60 monitoring stations across the Eastern Caribbean and can draw on about 100 more through partners. Machine learning models now pick and classify seismic signals faster and more consistently than manual review. Adding them to the existing network is the cheapest route to automated public alerts, much cheaper than building detection from nothing.
Finding the missing faster
Matching missing person reports against hospital admissions, shelter registers and social media posts is a data-matching job. Name and photo matching software can suggest likely matches for a volunteer to confirm, which is far faster than people cross-checking dozens of separate spreadsheets.
A shared missing persons and shelter registry, built and rehearsed by the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) before any disaster, would serve hurricanes and floods as well as earthquakes. The same goes for equipment: micro drones and thermal rubble scanners are commercially available, and a jointly funded regional search and rescue unit based in Trinidad could hold them for the Eastern Caribbean.
Finding vulnerable buildings before a quake
Nobody knows, block by block, which buildings in Caribbean capitals would survive a quake like Venezuela's. Models trained on satellite imagery, street-level photographs and available drawings can flag the features that tend to fail first: soft-storey ground floors built around open parking or shops, unreinforced masonry, and irregular shapes. That produces a citywide first cut far cheaper than inspecting every building, and engineers can then inspect the flagged schools, hospitals and crowded buildings first.
The weak point is data. Many Caribbean cities lack a digital building inventory, so the model's list is only as good as the imagery and records behind it, and engineers still have to confirm each flagged building on site.
What Caribbean governments and building owners should do now
- Governments of Trinidad and Tobago and the Eastern Caribbean, with the UWI Seismic Research Centre: fund a pilot adding machine learning detection to the Centre's existing network, with a target of automated public alerts for damaging quakes, and ask Google whether Android Earthquake Alerts can be enabled nationally.
- Planning and works ministries in Port of Spain, Bridgetown and other capitals: commission an imagery-based seismic vulnerability screen of the city, starting with every school and hospital, and budget for engineer inspections of the highest-risk 10%.
- CDEMA: build and test a shared missing persons and shelter registry with name and photo matching before the next hurricane season, and run a drill using it.
- Governments of Trinidad and Tobago, Aruba, Curaçao, Bonaire and Venezuela: agree a standing mutual aid arrangement for search and rescue teams and equipment across the southern Caribbean.
- Owners of older multi-storey buildings: hire a registered structural engineer to carry out a rapid visual screening this year, and fix soft-storey ground floors first.
Frequently Asked Questions
What should I do in the first seconds of an earthquake?
Drop to your hands and knees, take cover under a sturdy table or desk, and hold on until the shaking stops. Do not run outside during shaking, because falling glass and masonry near building exits cause many injuries. After a strong quake near the coast, move to high ground at once without waiting for an official tsunami warning.
How can I get earthquake alerts on my phone?
On Android, check for Earthquake alerts in your phone's safety and emergency settings; if the option is missing, Google has not yet enabled it in your country. iPhones rely on government emergency alerts and apps, so follow your national disaster office and the UWI Seismic Research Centre, which posts reports of felt earthquakes in the Eastern Caribbean. You can also report shaking you felt to the US Geological Survey's "Did You Feel It?" service, which helps map intensity.
Is there a tsunami warning system for the Caribbean?
Yes. UNESCO's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission coordinates the Caribbean tsunami warning system known as CARIBE-EWS, and the US Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issues tsunami threat messages for the region to national authorities. Countries rehearse it each year in the CARIBE WAVE exercise. Public warnings still come from your national disaster office, so know its channels.
Does home insurance in the Caribbean cover earthquake damage?
Many Caribbean property policies include earthquake as part of catastrophe cover, but usually with a separate, higher deductible set as a percentage of the sum insured. Read your policy schedule for the catastrophe deductible and check that the sum insured reflects current rebuilding costs. Governments are covered separately through parametric insurance from the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility.
How can a building owner check whether a building is vulnerable?
Hire a structural engineer registered with your national engineering board, in Trinidad and Tobago the Board of Engineering of Trinidad and Tobago, to carry out a rapid visual screening. The widely used method, FEMA P-154 from the United States, scores buildings on features such as soft storeys, irregular shape and construction type. Buildings that score poorly then need a detailed assessment and a costed retrofit plan.