Venezuela quake kills 589 as citizens turn to Euronews TikTok
A 7.5-magnitude earthquake has killed at least 589 people in Venezuela, where the failure of state emergency services has forced citizens to use a European broadcaster's TikTok feed to coordinate rescues.
Two major earthquakes struck Venezuela on Wednesday night, leaving at least 589 people dead and 2,980 injured, with hundreds more missing. The seismic doublet, measuring magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5, has plunged much of the country into chaos and overwhelmed domestic infrastructure.
Faced with patchy telecommunications and a severe shortage of emergency resources, desperate residents have turned to an unlikely lifeline: the Spanish-language TikTok channel of European broadcaster Euronews. The platform's live broadcast of rescue operations drew over a thousand concurrent users who used the chat to beg for help and track missing relatives.
Trapped residents used the European news feed to broadcast their exact coordinates. "🆘 Copy! Help, we are trapped on the 7th floor of Res. Caribe Mar, with two children and a five-month-old baby," wrote user A.G🍒👸🏾. Other users posted specific locations, such as Aillon warning of children at "La Guaira, Los Cocos beach, oop27 tower A," and Eliobana Guerrero pleading for rescuers at "Hotel Catimar, Puerto Viejo in Catia La Mar." Yadira also used the channel to appeal for a family in "Res. Bahía de Mar, La Guaira."
The chat simultaneously served as a makeshift missing persons bureau. Users like Flaquitaaaaaaa asked about specific individuals, including "Sabrina Melisa López Silva, in La Guaira." Another user, identified only by a butterfly emoji, repeatedly begged for help finding "Julián Melian Amador." Volunteers like user Fabi🖤 attempted to organize the chaotic data, offering private lists of names to anyone conducting search efforts.
The reliance on a foreign media outlet's social media feed highlights the scale of the state's failure under President Delcy Rodríguez. She succeeded Nicolás Maduro after he was seized by the United States in January. In the chat, user ceciliagomez599 demanded to know "Where are the rescuers?", while María a Gocha Orozco wrote: "If the Venezuelan government had the machinery and all the tools, there wouldn't be so many dead."
Ordinary citizens have largely been forced to organize their own emergency response. User Reimary noted that "Women are helping at the collection centres," filling the vacuum left by official services. The disaster has prompted a major international humanitarian mobilisation, exposing the deep fragility of Venezuela's public institutions to a global audience.
