Venezuela is trying to count its dead after two devastating earthquakes struck the country, and the numbers are grim. According to incomplete government figures, over 1,700 people have died and more than 5,000 are injured - and that's only the opening tally.

Two powerful quakes, magnitude 7.2 and 7.5, hit on 24 June and struck Caracas and the federal state of La Guaira hardest. The US Geological Survey estimates the real death toll „probably runs into the tens of thousands" - a gap that says everything about how hard it is for a country in crisis to measure its own suffering. In Caracas alone 432 schools were damaged, and eight hospitals had to close.

The health system, already fragile before the disaster, can now barely breathe. A doctor in the capital describes how intensive care units that used to take up to ten patients can now take only four - for lack of staff and equipment. When an earthquake hits a country that has been sinking into economic and political crisis for years, the aftermath is not just rubble, but a system with nothing left to respond with.

Authorities suspended classes and turned the surviving schools into temporary shelters. On Monday a weaker 4.9-magnitude tremor hit, sending people out of their buildings again. The Balkans knows well what it means when the ground shakes - but also what it means when, after the quake, the biggest blow comes from how weak the system was before nature struck. The question for Venezuela is not only how much the earth brought down, but how much the state had left to lose in the first place.