Nearly ten weeks after two powerful earthquakes struck Venezuela, the country is moving from rescue into a less visible phase of disaster. As other countries and recent survivors of catastrophic events know well, the days after the initial response and media coverage have faded are when hard realities surface.

This is called the recovery phase of a disaster, and it can be long, difficult work. A 2024 review of disaster-recovery research put the timeframe more starkly: “Recovery is a long-term process that might take years or decades to complete.” The researchers also caution that physical reconstruction and socioeconomic recovery are not the same thing. Rebuilding structures creates the conditions for recovery, but communities must also restore the social and economic connections that allow people to live and work.

The official death toll had reached 6,125 by August . Hospitals had treated nearly 61,000 people, while authorities reported that only 16.5 percent of the earthquake debris had been cleared. Those numbers show that the emergency is not over. It has changed form.

“For us, the emergency is not over yet,” Stephanie Hochstetter of the World Food Programme told me. Without sustained support for vulnerable populations, she warned, existing fragility can deepen into another crisis as families struggle to find food, recover livelihoods and regain economic stability.

That distinction matters. Disaster response saves lives in the immediate aftermath of an event. Recovery determines whether those lives can be rebuilt.

Displacement Creates New Risks

The 7.2- and 7.5-magnitude earthquakes struck within one minute of each other on June 24. UNICEF described them as Venezuela’s most significant seismic event in more than a century. The agency initially estimated that 1.8 million people, including 680,000 children, needed humanitarian assistance. Many surviving families moved into tents, school courtyards and informal settlements. Others remained near damaged homes because they feared losing property or had nowhere else to go.

Save the Children reported that some camps had only one or two functioning toilets for hundreds of people. Families lacked regular access to running water, safe drinking water and private sanitation facilities. Some residents reportedly returned to structurally damaged buildings simply to use a bathroom.

These conditions increase the risk of diarrhea, skin infections and other gastrointestinal illnesses. High daytime temperatures and heavy nighttime rain can also contribute to dehydration and respiratory disease. Women and adolescent girls face additional problems when they cannot access private toilets, clean water or menstrual products.

But displacement also illustrates why recovery cannot be divided neatly into separate sectors.

A family may simultaneously need shelter, food, sanitation, health care, income and a safe place for children to attend school. Hochstetter said that trying to address only one of those needs is insufficient. “The response to the recovery efforts needs to be multi-sector and it needs to be sustained,” she said. That means rebuilding a community requires more than repairing what was physically damaged.

Recovery Is More Than Reconstruction

Earthquakes destroy buildings and infrastructure, but their effects move quickly into household economics.

In heavily affected areas such as La Guaira, Hochstetter described families who lost homes and livelihoods at the same time. Damage to tourism, fisheries, transportation and other local economic activity means that reconstruction and income recovery are connected.

“You need to reconstruct first to get the incomes back, to get the jobs going,” she said.

Food security becomes particularly important during this period because households cannot participate meaningfully in their own recovery if they are spending most of their time trying to meet basic food needs.

“Food is the foundation that makes the rest of whatever is needed possible,” Hochstetter said. “If a person cannot eat, you cannot function.”

That principle extends beyond food assistance. Water systems must be repaired. Disease surveillance must continue. Children need vaccinations, nutrition support, safe housing and education. Families may need help replacing identity documents, establishing ownership of damaged property or restarting businesses.

Schools create another complication. Some have been used as emergency shelters even as children need to return to classrooms. Restoring education therefore requires both reopening schools and finding safe alternatives for families who have been displaced. Recovery is not a sequence in which one problem ends before the next begins. Communities often have to solve many of them at once.

Recovery Depends On Sustained Funding

Initial aid shipments brought medical supplies, water-storage equipment, purification materials, tents and educational resources. UNICEF mobilized a 47-metric-ton shipment from an emergency stockpile in Copenhagen. The Pan American Health Organization also launched a $24 million appeal to support six months of health response and early recovery for approximately 700,000 people.

But supplies delivered during the first weeks cannot replace sustained services. Water systems must be repaired. Disease surveillance must continue. Children need vaccinations, nutrition support, safe housing and education. Families may also need help replacing identity documents and proving ownership of damaged property.

Research on the economics of recovery also suggests that speed alone is the wrong measure of success. In an economic analysis of recovery from the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, Wei Xie, disaster economist Adam Rose and their colleagues concluded that “shortening the recovery period is not nearly as effective as increasing reconstruction investment levels.” Their modeling found that resilience strategies that accelerated investment and recovery could have substantially reduced the earthquake’s cumulative economic losses.

That distinction matters when international attention begins to decline. The question is not simply how quickly outside assistance can end, but whether investment remains sufficient for local economies and households to recover.

The most effective recovery efforts will therefore support local capacity rather than create temporary parallel systems. International organizations can provide money, technical expertise and supplies, but Venezuelan educators, health workers, community groups and families will carry much of the long-term work.

A Road Map For Long-Term Recovery

One tool for bridging that gap is the Post-Disaster Needs Assessment, or PDNA.

The government has agreed to undertake the assessment with international partners. The process is designed to identify disaster-related damage and recovery needs across sectors, while providing a common framework for government, international organizations and multilateral financial institutions.

There is also evidence that what governments choose to measure can shape what recovery ultimately addresses. A 2024 study of Nepal’s Post-Disaster Needs Assessment following the 2015 Gorkha earthquake compared the assessment with household recovery outcomes four years later. Researchers found that a recovery approach focused largely on rebuilding housing and restoring income “overlooked other important recovery outcomes such as health.”

That finding matters for Venezuela. A damage assessment can tell policymakers how much infrastructure was lost. A recovery framework must also ask what people need in order to live, work, and remain in their communities.

Those questions include where families will live while permanent housing is rebuilt, how children will return to school, how local businesses will reopen, how workers will earn income, and how food and health systems can function during the transition.

The answers determine whether reconstruction simply replaces damaged structures or actually creates more resilient communities.

Recovery Belongs To Communities

The most effective recovery efforts will ultimately support local capacity rather than create temporary parallel systems.

International organizations can provide funding, technical expertise, logistics and supplies. Governments can rebuild infrastructure and restore public services. But Venezuelan educators, health workers, businesses, community organizations and families will carry much of the long-term recovery work.

That local agency is easy to overlook when disaster coverage focuses primarily on destruction.

Hochstetter described a population accustomed to finding ways forward under difficult circumstances.

“They are resilient, they are ingenious,” she said. “They find an opportunity where you think there is nothing left. They find a way to make it happen.”

Resilience, however, should not become an excuse to leave communities to recover alone. People can possess extraordinary capacity and still need functioning institutions, reliable infrastructure, financial resources and sustained international support. That may be one of the most important lessons from Venezuela as attention moves toward the next disaster.

The goal of recovery is not simply to keep people alive after a catastrophe. It is to restore the conditions that allow families and communities to build lives again.