2 powerful quakes strike Venezuela
Powerful twin earthquakes have killed 32 people and injured more than 700, Venezuela’s interim president said Thursday, after the massive shocks collapsed entire buildings and sent people running in panic.
Authorities and average Venezuelans were clambering on piles of rubble in the hunt for survivors after the disaster that prompted leader Delcy Rodriguez to declare a state of emergency.
The earthquakes of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 struck the same area of Venezuela on Wednesday, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), causing buildings in the capital to crumble and forcing the closure of the country’s main airport.
Addressing the nation early Thursday, Rodriguez said, “At this time, we have received reports of 32 deaths” and “more than 700 injured,” adding she did not yet have data on the “hardest-hit region” of La Guaira, located near the capital.
Rodriguez earlier said 20 aftershocks had followed the twin earthquakes.
‘Serious damage’
The quakes triggered panic in the capital and drove people into the streets, Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists saw.
“The stairs came away, the whole wall cracked. Things fell from the ceiling. It was horrible,” said 54-year-old bank employee Odalis Escalona.
An AFP journalist saw a 22-story building completely destroyed in the capital’s Altamira neighborhood, where people cried out relatives’ names as volunteers climbed over the rubble.
The first quake, with an epicenter 21 kilometers (13 miles) west of the coastal town of Moron, occurred at 2204 GMT, USGS said. Within a minute, a magnitude 7.5 quake struck about 45 km away.
Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello asked people to leave their homes, adding that gas supplies had been cut to several buildings as a precaution.
“We have some damaged structures and we don’t want any kind of accident involving gas to occur,” he said.
Maiquetia International Airport, located near Caracas, was closed due to “serious damage” to its infrastructure, Rodriguez said, with social media posts showing its severely damaged facilities.
The tremors struck at a depth of 22 km and 10 km, respectively.
They prompted screams of panic at a shopping center in Caracas, an AFP journalist observed.
“It was unbelievable, I don’t even know how long it lasted,” said shopkeeper Heidi Romero, who was on the top floor when the quake struck.
“We went out through the emergency stairs; that’s how they got us out,” the 42-year-old told AFP.
Dozens more in the capital exited buildings and waited outside before returning to their offices and homes.
Hardest hit
The states of Trujillo, Carabobo, Miranda, and La Guaira were the hardest hit, according to Cabello.
The quake was felt as far away as the Colombian capital of Bogota, where alarms sounded and some residents evacuated buildings as a precaution.
The strongest tremors in earthquake-prone Venezuela’s recent history occurred in the northeast in 1997, killing 73 people, and in Caracas in 1967, when 236 people died.
Shortly after the twin quakes on Wednesday, a magnitude 7.2 tremor hit northern Japan, the country’s weather agency said, with no casualties or material damage reported.
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