In this study, a two-stage method is presented for identifying multiple damage scenarios. In the first stage, the damage locating vector (DLV) method using normalized cumulative energy (nce) is employed for damage localization in structures. In the second stage, the differential evolution algorithm (DE) is used for damage severity of the structures. In addition, in the second stage, a modification of an available objective function is made for handing the issue of symmetric structures. To verify the effectiveness of the present technique, numerical examples of a 72-bar space truss and a one-span steel portal frame are considered. In addition, the effect of noise on the performance of the identification results is also investigated. The numerical results show that the proposed combination gives good assessment of damage location and extent for multiple structural damage cases.