Jewish and Israeli aid and rescue organizations are preparing to send teams to Venezuela after the poverty-stricken South American country was hit by massive back-to-back earthquakes on Wednesday night, representatives of the groups told eJewishPhilanthropy. At least 164 people have been pronounced dead so far and hundreds more injured, though the numbers are expected to rise considerably as search efforts get underway, with some projections anticipating a death toll into the tens of thousands. 

The Israeli government also said that it was preparing to send an aid delegation. “The Foreign Ministry is holding a situational assessment with the relevant figures in Israel and is determining ways to help,” the ministry said in a statement on Thursday morning.

Shortly after 6 p.m. local time, the 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude earthquakes struck, with the epicenter in the town of Morón, roughly 100 miles west of the capital Caracas. The powerful tremors were felt throughout the region, collapsing buildings and causing massive damage across the country. The earthquakes — the most severe in the country in a century — come as Venezuela is in a state of turmoil, after the United States captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

There were no immediate reports of deaths among Venezuela’s small Jewish population, though there were “injuries of all degrees,” Ezra Kaim, the director of the Hebraica Caracas Jewish Community Center, told eJP.

A video from the San Bernardino neighborhood of Caracas, an area where Kaim said that many Jewish Venezuelans live, showed one apartment building that had completely collapsed. Hebraica, whose facility was also lightly damaged in the earthquake, has established a command center to coordinate relief efforts.

Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund said that some 500 Jewish families had been displaced by the earthquakes, and it was putting together an aid package “worth hundreds of thousands of shekels” to support the community. 

“Just as we stood by the communities in Beit Shemesh, Be’er Sheva, Dimona, and Arad during Operation Rising Lion, after they endured severe damage and tremendous upheaval, we will stand by our brothers and sisters in Venezuela in their time of need,” Eyal Ostrinsky, chairman of KKL-JNF, said in a statement. 

Israeli relief groups IsraAid, Natan and SmartAid told eJP on Thursday that they were dispatching delegations to the country. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee also told eJP that it was sending a team.

SmartAid, which already had a small presence in the country, sent its representatives to the affected area, the group’s founder, Shachar Zahavi, said.

IsraAid said that it was dispatching a team of “emergency response specialists and humanitarian experts” from neighboring Colombia, where the group has maintained a presence since 2019. The delegation would focus on providing “psychological first aid, water, sanitation and hygiene, and [performing] rapid needs assessment in affected communities,” the organization said.

“As an organization, we have deep ties to communities across the country and many Venezuelan team members, and we are already engaging with local partners to prepare an urgent response,” IsraAid CEO Yotam Polizer said in a statement. “In a challenging context, we will utilize our years of experience responding to emergencies throughout the Latin America and Caribbean region to bring relief in some of the worst-affected areas.”

Representatives of the various Israeli and Jewish groups told eJP that they were in contact with figures on the ground to assess the country’s immediate needs.

According to Zahavi, in the coming days, relief efforts will likely focus primarily on search-and-rescue as emergency personnel and local residents attempt to pull as many people from the rubble as possible. Restoring telecommunications and ensuring access to clean water will be top priorities, he added. 

Zahavi said his American corporate sponsors were already working to send emergency telecommunications systems and other equipment to the country. He noted that the damage to Caracas’ main airport will make it more complicated to get equipment and personnel to the affected areas, and emergency response groups will likely have to fly to airfields on the perimeter and then get closer overland with trucks. 

“JDC will focus on needs in both the Jewish community and the broader population and is readying its emergency response team to dispatch to Venezuela once the airport in Caracas opens again,” JDC said in a statement. 

“JDC is already working with the Jewish community and local partners in the region to ensure immediate needs like food, medicine, water and shelter will be addressed swiftly. JDC’s decades-long work with the Jewish community includes a wide-ranging and sophisticated social service and humanitarian aid operation,” the organization said. 

Alice Miller, the CEO of Natan, told eJP that the group’s effort to send an Israeli delegation was hampered by the fact that it is effectively impossible for Israeli citizens to receive visas to travel to Venezuela after the country, which maintains close relations with Iran, cut diplomatic ties with Israel in 2009.

To get around this issue, the organization was sending a delegation of people who also have passports from countries that can receive visas.

“Twenty years of experience have taught us that the first hours are what matter most — medically
and psychologically alike. Natan was built for exactly these moments, and we are sending our best team to Venezuela,” Miller said in a statement.

Other groups that regularly send search-and-rescue units to disaster sites, such as United Hatzalah, said they were monitoring the situation and determining how to proceed.