The death toll from two huge earthquakes that devastated Venezuela, flattening buildings in the capital city of Caracas, has reached 1,450, with over 3,150 people injured.
Thousands are still believed to be trapped beneath the rubble after the back-to-back 7.1 and 7.5 magnitude tremors reduced the nation’s major airport to rubble and destroyed cellphone networks last week.
Around 30,000 Venezuelan emergency workers and 2,700 rescue experts from abroad have been deployed to search for survivors. According to a website promoted by the country’s political opposition on Sunday, almost 50,000 people are still unaccounted for.
‘Rescue and recovery efforts are ongoing. Today we have recovered people alive and, therefore, operations are not being suspended. We always maintain hope,’ said interim President Delcy Rodriguez, after announcing a presidential commission that would inspect unstable buildings on Sunday.
Ms Rodriguez said schools would remain closed for another week and that the electricity supply in La Guaira has been restored to 75 per cent capacity.
Much of Simón Bolívar International Airport and parts of major cities have been destroyed, with electricity pylons down, gas mains fractured, and roads and bridges blocked and fallen. More than 2,500 residential buildings and other facilities have completely collapsed or been severely damaged, including about 780 homes and 38 hospitals, according to the latest damage assessment.
Strongest to strike Venezuela in more than a century
The quakes, which are among the strongest to strike Venezuela in more than a century, struck while many Venezuelans were at home marking Battle of Carabobo Day, the public holiday commemorating the 1821 victory that helped secure the country’s independence from Spain.
The first tremor happened at 6:04pm Venezuela time about 30km northwest of Montalbán, Venezuela and about 180km west of Caracas. The quake had a depth of 10km.
A second powerful earthquake then struck the country just one minute later, according to the USGS. It had a depth of 9km and its epicenter was 7km southwest of the city of Morón.
Columns of dust rose over neighbourhoods across Caracas, packed with restaurants and businesses, as the quakes struck, sending people scrambling for safety.
Some reported cracks snaking up the exteriors of apartment blocks with residents rushing into the streets.
Entire exterior walls were ripped away from some buildings, leaving furniture and the inside of apartments exposed.
While the Venezuela sits near multiple fault lines, its position across both the South American and Caribbean plates makes earthquakes much less common than in other parts of Latin America.
Along the Pacific coast – in Mexico and Chile, for example – earthquakes are frequent; the two countries sit along the seismically active tectonic belt known as the ‘Pacific Ring of Fire,’ responsible for 90 per cent of earthquakes, according to the USGS.
