Powerful twin earthquakes have killed 32 people and injured more than 700, Venezuela’s interim president said on Thursday, after the massive shocks collapsed entire buildings and sent people running in panic.
Authorities and volunteers 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, 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.
The quakes triggered panic in the capital and drove people into the streets. “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.
US President Donald Trump said late Wednesday that “the two major earthquakes that just hit the great people of Venezuela are both massive in scale and have left a devastating number of deaths.”
“The U.S.A. stands ready, willing, and able to help! I have instructed all agencies of our government to get ready to move quickly,” the American president wrote on his Truth Social platform.
The first quake, with an epicenter 21 kilometres west of the coastal town of Moron, occurred at 2204 GMT, USGS said. Within a minute, a 7.5-magnitude quake struck about 45 kilometres away.
Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello asked people to leave their homes, adding that gas supplies had been cut to several buildings as a precaution.
The Maiquetia International Airport, located near Caracas, was closed due to serious damage to its infrastructure, Rodriguez said.
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 Colombian disaster management agency ruled out the possibility of a tsunami taking place in the aftermath.
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 7.2-magnitude tremor hit northern Japan, with no casualties or material damage reported.
