Explainer: How the world can be ready for the next big earthquake

On 24 June 2026, twin earthquakes struck Venezuela, killing thousands, destroying hospitals and displacing tens of thousands. The disaster laid bare, once again, the gap between the scale of earthquake risk worldwide and the preparedness of the systems meant to respond to it.

Seismologists described the event as a rare earthquake "doublet," the strongest to hit Venezuela since 1900. 

At least 2,950 people have been confirmed killed, over 11,000 injured and tens of thousands reported missing. The US Geological Survey warned the true toll could reach 10,000 or more. Of at least 855 buildings damaged, 189 collapsed completely. Thirteen hospitals were damaged across the country. 

The UN estimated total direct damages at $6.7 billion, which is approximately 6 percent of Venezuela's GDP. 

What made the disaster so deadly, in addition to the earthquakes themselves, was the state of the systems meant to respond to them. 

Reports emerged that with no national early warning system in place, people had no time to react. Volunteers dug through rubble with their hands, almost 24 hours after the earthquakes, as cities faced shortages of heavy equipment. The International Rescue Committee said the response was not adequate given the scale of destruction. 

"As the death toll rises, needs are skyrocketing," UNHCR warned. 

It is a warning the world has heard before.

Istanbul conference: Preparing for the next big one

The devastation in Venezuela was still unfolding when health ministers, scientists and emergency planners gathered in Istanbul, a city that knows better than most what is at stake.

Istanbul is home to more than 15 million people and sits close to the North Anatolian Fault, one of the most seismically active fault lines in the world. 

Research published in 2025 identified a fault line beneath the Sea of Marmara, just south of the city, capable of producing a magnitude 7 earthquake. Peer-reviewed estimates put the chance of a magnitude 7 or greater earthquake affecting Istanbul over the coming decades at around 40 to 60 percent. 

Around 200 participants attended the conference, including eight health ministers from across the WHO African, European, Eastern Mediterranean and Western Pacific regions. It was hosted by the Government of Türkiye and the WHO Regional Office for Europe.

They discussed what protecting health from earthquakes concretely requires.

There was a call for coordinated planning across borders and sectors to ensure urban planning, water and civil protection. And the meeting urged for special attention to the most vulnerable — older people, people with disabilities and displaced populations. 

"The lesson of 2023 is that the time to act is now, in the quiet years, not in the rubble," said Dr Hans Henri P. Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe. 

How big is the risk in Europe?

The 53 Member States of the WHO European region cover two of the world's major earthquake belts. In the west and south — Greece, Italy, Romania and Türkiye — account for almost 80 percent of the modeled average annual economic loss from earthquakes in Europe, estimated at €7 billion a year. 

In Central Asia, vast stretches of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and parts of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan sit in zones of very high seismic risk — where a single major earthquake could easily cross borders. The Fergana Valley alone, shared by three of those countries, is home to 11 million people.

The gap between risk and awareness is stark. In the European Union, an estimated 35 percent of the people live within a moderate or high seismic hazard zone, but only around 13 percent, consider themselves at risk. 

What does global earthquake preparedness require?

The International Platform for Reducing Earthquake Disaster (IPRED), an intergovernmental scientific platform operating under UNESCO, promotes international cooperation on seismology and earthquake engineering to strengthen building codes worldwide. 

Its core argument is that improving the safety of buildings and housing is a fundamental priority for reducing risk, and that this requires not just scientific knowledge but the capacity to apply it at national and local level. 

The platform works across fostering international cooperation, sharing knowledge about earthquake disaster mitigation, and building capacity for disaster risk reduction at every level of government.

What happened in Türkiye - and what did the world learn?

The Istanbul conference drew heavily on the lessons of the earthquakes that struck southern Türkiye and north-west Syria on February 6, 2023. 

Official figures record 53,697 deaths, 107,213 injuries and more than 3.5 million people evacuated. At least 15 hospitals were damaged, and health facilities and other non-residential buildings accounted for around 28 percent of the total damage. 

The collapse of hospitals during a disaster creates a lethal compounding effect. When hospitals fail during an earthquake, the demand for trauma and emergency care rises just as the capacity to provide it falls, creating a dangerous bottleneck. 

Additionally, WHO warns that rates of depression, anxiety and other mental health conditions rise sharply after a major earthquake, and the need for rehabilitation, including for people left with long-term disabilities, runs for years afterwards. 

Even the responders are affected, nearly half of those who worked on the 2023 response in Türkiye reported physical or mental health effects during or after their deployment. 

What are governments being asked to do?

The Istanbul conference called on countries to build new hospitals and clinics to seismic standards and to retrofit existing ones. It also discussed the importance of planning for backup power, water and supplies so facilities keep working when the services around them fail. 

The cost of doing so is lower than most assume. Incorporating disaster protection into the design of a new hospital is estimated to add less than 4% to its total cost, and retrofitting a hospital's critical contents can cost as little as 1 percent while protecting up to 90 percent of its value, according to the UN. 

Beyond hospitals, governments need to maintain trained emergency medical teams ready to deploy within hours, to test response plans through regular simulation exercises, to coordinate across borders and sectors - including urban planning, water and civil protection - and to keep the public accurately informed. 

There also needs to be specific protection of health workers and those most exposed: older people, people with disabilities and displaced populations.

"We learned, at great cost, what it takes to keep a health system working when the ground gives way beneath you: teams ready to move within hours, hospitals built to stay standing and response plans tested long before they were needed," said a Türkiye health ministry spokesperson. 

"We have been sharing those lessons with other countries and today is the culmination of those efforts. The next earthquake will come. The time to prepare for it is now," added the spokesperson.

Venezuela has just shown what happens when it doesn't.