The Venezuelan Store owner Laurinda Pestana boxes emergency medical supplies with volunteers on June 30, 2026, a week after two devastating earthquakes struck Venezuela back-to-back. (Lily Oppenheimer/WABE)
Metro Atlanta’s Venezuelan community is pulling together to support those impacted by the two devastating earthquakes that struck the country back-to-back last week.
The Atlanta metro is home to one of the largest populations of Venezuelan immigrants in the U.S., according to the Migration Policy Institute. Most have fled here within the last decade and settled in Gwinnett, Fulton, Cobb and DeKalb counties. That means Atlanta has become one major hub for relief efforts — mostly organized by small businesses and community leaders.
The Venezuelan Store in Alpharetta is just one that’s collecting emergency supplies to send for the coming weeks and months. As of Thursday, the corner-store-sized bodega and deli that’s normally stocked with Venezuelan cooking essentials had already shipped out close to 100 boxes. Volunteers there have spent the last week doing the backbreaking work of organizing and boxing up supplies to aid in the recovery process.
Store owner Laurinda Pestana is from the capital city of Caracas. Like many of their regular customers, she and her husband still have family there.
She tells WABE members of her family have completely lost their liquor store business in the terremoto, or earthquake. What little resources they survived on before, under the past dictatorship of Nicolas Maduro, have now been obliterated.
“One of the most important donations people can make are medicines,” Pestana tells WABE. “Medicines, medicines. You know, Venezuela is not like a regular country, like it’s very hard for us to find medicines, and now of course, it’s worse.”
Emergency medical supplies and other donations from across metro Atlanta prepare to be shipped to Miami, and are then bound for Venezuela to aid in earthquake recovery efforts. (Photo courtesy of the Venezuelan Store in Alpharetta)
The first shock was reported at roughly a magnitude of 7.2 on the Richter Scale. Less than a minute later, a larger earthquake struck with a magnitude of 7.5. On paper, both are considered deadly, and can cause near total destruction and tens of thousands of deaths. Outside of Caracas, other hard-hit areas across the northern state of La Guaira have been basically flattened to rubble.
The brutal earthquakes hit just six months after the dramatic U.S. military capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores. President Donald Trump then announced that the U.S. will “run” Venezuela temporarily, and that he plans to take control of the country’s oil industry and tap into its vast oil reserves to sell to other nations.
But despite all the reserves, citizens are still forced to dig their loved ones out of the carnage with their bare hands as they wait for heavy machinery, and fuel to operate them.
According to Venezuelan officials, more than 50,000 are still missing. Pestana says they’re focused now on the humanitarian crisis and the anguish to come after search-and-rescue efforts cease.
