When twin earthquakes struck northern Venezuela last month, more than 3,800 people died and hospitals and homes were destroyed. The interim government’s response was slow, but within hours, a network of developers and programmers—many living abroad—began building digital tools to help.
Jorge Bastidas, a 31-year-old Venezuelan programmer in Buenos Aires, joined the effort. He later explained that the group decided to act without waiting for official action.
AI tools built in hours, not days
Bastidas and a team of six created Desaparecidos Terremoto Venezuela, a website for reporting and reuniting missing people. They used Claude Opus 4.8 and facial recognition software donated by Mexican company Lab-Co to design a site that loads quickly without requiring registration or app downloads. In the first two days, it received over 30,000 reports.
Telecommunications infrastructure, including a submarine fiber-optic cable and mobile network towers, was severely damaged. Power outages added to the challenge of accessing the internet. With a near-total absence of state support, Venezuelan citizens and diaspora members like Bastidas stepped in. Developers in Miami, San Francisco, Chile, and Argentina used AI to build platforms for missing persons, donation coordination, structural damage assessment, and shelter mapping.
Samuel Mariña, another Venezuelan developer based in California, created Ayuda en Camino, a site connecting aid organizations, volunteers, and people in need. Built in four hours using Replit, it includes a WhatsApp assistant for users with limited connectivity. Mariña said the internet was flooded with disconnected information, so the team wanted to centralize it to ensure aid reached the right places.
Jorge Luis Chacón, CEO of AI engineering company Henkki, developed Somos Acompañamiento with a religious organization to track survivors and the injured in hospitals. The platform has over 84,000 registrations. Chacón is also working with human rights group Laboratorio Migrante on an AI system to monitor human trafficking risks in the region.
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Journalists and volunteers fill gaps left by the state
The lack of official resources forced journalists to adapt. A network of Venezuelan women journalists built a search tool using Lovable, compiling data from medical centers and shelters. Valeria Pedicini, a member of the network, said verification was critical because no official information was available.
Marianne Diaz Hernández, a digital security expert in Santiago, built terremotove.com as she watched social media flood with desperate requests for help from survivors. It took her an
AI “should never replace the state’s legal responsibility or its accountability mechanisms.” Nicole Sánchez, researcher at Fundación InternetBolivia.org.
Three weeks later, international aid has started arriving, but civilian-led websites remain the main source of information.
Some developers are already planning next steps. Arturo Nieve, who built a missing-persons registry called Civis, is adapting it to address another threat: the lack of early-warning systems for floods and landslides. Using open-source satellite data and rainfall forecasts, he sends alerts via text and WhatsApp to rural communities.
Bastidas’ team will keep Desaparecidos Terremoto running for another three months, ensuring the site stays available for future disasters. He reflected that hundreds of initiatives were activated with AI in less than a day. “Without AI, it would have taken me about 24 hours without rest to build something that took me three hours,” he said. “But AI is only a tool. The real value comes from the people using it.”