June 30 (UPI) — A preliminary satellite assessment by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration estimated that 58,870 buildings were damaged or destroyed after the twin earthquakes that struck Venezuela on June 24, as the death toll climbed above 1,700.

The assessment offers one of the clearest pictures yet of the scale of the disaster. The analysis was produced using radar data from the Sentinel-1 satellite, part of the European Union’s Copernicus Earth observation program.

By comparing satellite imagery collected before and after the disaster, analysts identified abrupt changes in ground stability that indicate severe structural damage or total building collapse. NASA classifies a structure as damaged when at least 50% of its footprint shows a loss of stability.

The agency emphasized that the assessment is a preliminary damage probability map that requires field verification. However, the strongest indicators of widespread destruction are concentrated along Venezuela’s central Caribbean coast, including La Guaira state and the Caracas metropolitan area.

At the same time, social media posts and engineering experts have highlighted extensive structural failures and the collapse of public housing built by the Venezuelan government. The widespread failure of buildings constructed under the Great Venezuela Housing Mission, a flagship public housing program launched by former President Hugo Chávez in 2011 and continued under Nicolás Maduro, has fueled public outrage.

Images recorded by rescue crews and survivors in housing developments in La Guaira and Caracas showed that load-bearing walls and interior partitions in several buildings allegedly contained expanded polystyrene blocks and aluminum sheets instead of reinforced concrete.

According to multiple engineering assessments, the high number of damaged buildings resulted from a combination of extreme geological conditions and structural vulnerabilities that accumulated over decades.

Buildings that remained standing or were weakened by the first magnitude 7.2 earthquake collapsed after a second magnitude 7.5 quake struck just 39 seconds later. Because both ruptures occurred at shallow depths of between 6 and 12 miles and directly beneath or near densely populated areas, seismic energy reached buildings with devastating force.

Geologist Eduardo Malagnino told Infobae that the magnitude 7.5 earthquake released energy equivalent to about 260 atomic bombs like the one dropped on Hiroshima.

Malagnino said the earthquakes resulted from strike-slip movement between tectonic plates, similar to California’s San Andreas Fault. The Caribbean Plate shifted eastward along the South American Plate, generating the destructive rupture.

Chilean civil engineer Rubén Boroschek, a specialist in earthquake engineering, told Spain’s El País newspaper that it is “difficult to justify” catastrophic collapses in buildings constructed after 1980.

The University of Chile professor said modern engineering provides the technical tools needed to prevent structural collapse, provided buildings are not constructed directly on active faults and building codes are properly enforced. He added that the absence of independent oversight and failure to comply with construction standards can have deadly consequences.

Independent professional organizations, including the Venezuelan College of Engineers, said the collapse of projects built under the Great Venezuela Housing Mission reflects years of financial opacity and contracts awarded without adequate oversight to state-owned construction companies from allied countries, including China, Turkey and Belarus, under military supervision.

The organizations said political pressure to rapidly inaugurate thousands of apartments for electoral purposes eliminated meaningful technical inspections and independent audits.

Acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez announced Monday that the government will begin a housing reconstruction program “as quickly as possible” and said authorities will guarantee the safety of workers involved in rebuilding efforts, according to local newspaper Ultimas Noticias.

Rodriguez said a team of specialists is evaluating whether damaged homes remain habitable while also planning new housing construction before the end of the year.

She added that authorities have identified families who lost their homes and said they will receive immediate assistance in temporary shelters established by the government.

The human toll of the disaster has been catastrophic. The Venezuelan government confirmed Monday that 1,719 people had died and 5,034 had been injured, while the United Nations estimated that as many as 50,000 people remain missing and about 6.76 million have been affected.

The United States Geological Survey estimated there is a 42% probability that the final death toll will range between 10,000 and 100,000.

The United Nations Development Programme estimated direct losses at $6.7 billion, equivalent to about 6% of Venezuela’s gross domestic product, with total economic losses potentially reaching between $10.05 billion and $20.1 billion.