A Venezuelan software developer used artificial intelligence to build a missing-persons platform within four and a half hours of the two major earthquakes that struck Venezuela on June 24. Nearly four months later, the website had received 82,610 reports about missing people. After volunteers reviewed the submissions and removed duplicate entries, 29,486 people remained listed on the platform as unreachable.
Jorge Bastidas, 32, lives in Argentina but was in Bogota on a work trip when the magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 earthquakes struck. He canceled his meetings and tried to contact his family, but his calls would not go through. Other Venezuelans around him faced the same problem.
About half an hour after the earthquakes, Bastidas noticed that people were using a YouTube news channel’s chat to ask about missing relatives. Unable to help directly from abroad, he decided to build a website where families could register missing people and search for information.
The resulting platform, Desaparecidos Terremoto Venezuela, has since faced a surge in traffic, false submissions and cyberattacks that altered thousands of records. Its work also highlights the difficulty of establishing how many people remain unaccounted for when families must rely on independent databases.
How AI helped build the platform in hours
Bastidas used Claude, Anthropic’s artificial intelligence assistant, to design and publish the website about four and a half hours after the earthquakes. He assigned the AI tasks normally handled by different software engineers, allowing several parts of the platform to be developed in parallel.
Users initially submitted missing-person details, photos, last known dates and locations, and contact information directly to a searchable database.
Bastidas shared the link with friends and acquaintances, and the platform spread through social media. On June 25, it reportedly reached a peak of about 800,000 users. The traffic overwhelmed the original infrastructure, forcing him to rebuild parts of the system to keep the site running.
The submissions brought other challenges. Some users uploaded jokes, memes and false reports, while others sent inappropriate images. Bastidas introduced restrictions on submitted information, blocked certain name patterns, added moderation tools and allowed users to report questionable content.
Volunteers verify thousands of reports
Over nearly four months, the website received 82,610 reports of missing people. After volunteers reviewed the information and removed duplicates, at least 29,486 people remained listed as unreachable.
Another independent initiative, Venezuela Reporta, estimated that 41,357 people had not been contacted. The databases may overlap, and some entries could refer to people who have since been found. Neither figure is a confirmed count of deaths or a definitive national tally of missing people.
The Venezuelan government had not published a comprehensive list of missing people or established an official channel for reporting them. On Aug. 4, La Guaira state Gov. Jose Alejandro Teran reported 1,579 missing people.
When asked about the lack of figures on July 11, National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez said the government could not operate on speculation and had to rely on reality. Families and independent initiatives, however, have continued to seek information through their own reporting systems.
The conflicting death tolls compound the uncertainty. The government has reported 6,509 deaths, a figure it has not updated since Aug. 24. A New York Times investigation published Oct. 21 cited a U.S. Geological Survey statistical model with a median estimate of about 53,000 deaths and an 81% probability that the actual toll exceeds 10,000. The estimate is not a confirmed count, but it illustrates the scale of uncertainty surrounding the disaster.
Hospital records and facial recognition help identify people
Daneli Hernandez, a Venezuelan lawyer living in Argentina who has worked with Bastidas for years, mobilized contacts in Venezuela to obtain hospital records. She saw handwritten lists of people who had arrived at medical facilities circulating on social media and asked friends and relatives working in hospitals to obtain records that could be compared with missing-person reports.
Outside hospitals, families searched handwritten lists posted for those looking for missing relatives. A team of 15 to 20 volunteers first transcribed hospital records from Caracas and La Guaira, then cross-checked entries to eliminate duplicates before uploading the verified data to the website. Hernandez said the team gathered more than 3,000 records from hospitals across the two areas.
The platform also incorporated a facial-recognition tool offered by LAB-CO, an innovation laboratory operating in Mexico. The tool adapted technology previously used by forensic services to help identify deceased people through tattoos. During the first two weeks after the earthquakes, the facial-recognition section attracted 19,000 users, according to Google Analytics figures.
The tool enabled users to compare photographs and cross-reference potential matches, including images collected from hospitals. Photographs also helped volunteers identify duplicate reports.
Cyberattacks and outdated records complicate the search
The platform suffered two attacks during its first days online. Bastidas said one incident altered 15,000 records. Daily backups helped restore the original database, although he estimated that about 1,200 records were lost. He also reported attacks involving automated bots, which led the team to restrict editing permissions and strengthen security controls.
Keeping records current has proved equally difficult. Alceo Angelini reported his cousin missing after losing contact with him for two days. His cousin eventually reappeared, but when Angelini later checked the website, the relative was still listed among people who had not been contacted.
Angelini noted that registering his cousin offered the family at least some comfort, knowing the case had been documented. Bastidas attributed the outdated entry to the small number of volunteers available to review changes. The team must check updates before changing a person’s status, and that process takes time as the database grows.
Bastidas plans to verify cases by phone
Bastidas plans to establish a call center to contact the telephone numbers available in the database and confirm the status of each report. The goal is to identify people who have been found, correct outdated entries and establish which cases remain unresolved.
The platform cannot determine the final death toll or reconcile all independent records on its own. Its immediate purpose is to give families a place to report missing relatives and help them find information while the search continues.
Bastidas argues that citizens shouldn’t have to wait for government intervention to start helping one another. He said he would feel satisfied when he could tell families, “This is what we have.”
The planned call center is his next step toward that goal, using direct contact to establish which reports still need answers.