Pedro Gomez asks people about his cousin, Andres Molina, who has been missing since the earthquakes, in La Guaira, Venezuela, Saturday, Aug. 22, 2026. (AP Photo\/Ariana Cubillos)<\/small><\/p>\n
2026-09-06T11:30:08Z<\/p>\n
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) \u2014 Antonella Molina, her nephew Pedro Molina and a group of friends set out at 8 a.m. on a recent Saturday, hands full of flyers, walking carefully through the rubble that remains throughout La Guaira after two catastrophic back-to-back earthquakes 10 weeks ago. <\/p>\n
Their mission is to find 18-year-old Andr\u00e9s Molina \u2014 Antonella\u2019s nephew and Pedro\u2019s cousin \u2014 who they haven\u2019t heard from since the double earthquakes hit Venezuela on June 24<\/a><\/span>. Andr\u00e9s is among tens of thousands who remain missing, according to an independent account, far surpassing the government estimate of 1,500.<\/p>\n Weeks before, Antonella and other relatives pulled the bodies of Andr\u00e9s\u2019 mother and brother from the collapsed remains of their 10-story apartment building that collapsed in La Guaira, the coastal area just north of the capital Caracas that was one of the hardest hit<\/a><\/span>. The building once housed more than 30 people but there was no sign of Andr\u00e9s, not even the backpack he always carried.<\/p>\n Neighbors told the family they have seen Andr\u00e9s wandering the destruction collecting scrap metal; they hold out hope that he survived. <\/p>\n \u201cThere are a lot of things that give us hope,\u201d Antonella said. \u201cAnd one of those is love.\u201d<\/p>\n Government figures of 6,500 dead and 1,500 have been widely questioned by people on the ground, although the Venezuelan government has said its response was quick and statistics are \u201crigorously verified.\u201d<\/a><\/span><\/p>\nSearching without government help<\/h2>\n