Residents in Venezuela’s capital and nearby cities described scenes of terror and confusion as buildings collapsed, windows rattled, and homes lost power when two major earthquakes struck the country on Wednesday evening.
“I’ve never felt something so strong,” María Barco, 24, said from the city of San Felipe, near the earthquake’s epicenter, describing a strong shake that seemed to last 60 to 90 seconds. Her daughter screamed, she said. The back part of her house fell in, she said, leaving the family unable to get back in, and they were without internet or electricity.
The extent of the damage was not yet clear on Wednesday night, but fears of a widespread disaster were high. The second earthquake was the largest to hit the country since 1900 at a magnitude of 7.5, according to U.S. monitoring agencies. It followed a 7.2-magnitude quake less than a minute earlier.
Others in San Felipe, west of the capital, described residents flooding into the streets, screaming and embracing, accompanied by the sounds of distressed parrots and dogs. Some, fearful of further shakes, said they planned to spend the night outdoors. Among them was Lourdes Azuaje, 37, who said she was in the shower when the trembling began. As she felt the walls and ceiling shake and things began to fall, she ran outside in her towel, she said. Part of her neighbor’s roof had fallen in, she added.
In Caracas, emergency responders searched into the night for survivors after a six-story residential building collapsed in the neighborhood of El Paraíso. Dozens of anxious relatives gathered behind police tape, as National Guard, police and Civil Protection officers climbed through the debris, shouting out the names of missing residents and ordering onlookers to step back and stay silent so that those trapped could hear them. Rescuers pulled a young girl and a dog free, but it was unclear how many others were be buried in the rubble of the building.
In Naguanagua, a city in the nearby state of Carabobo, west of the capital, Yohana Márquez said that when the temblor started, she told her daughters to stay put in their home. But the shaking did not stop. “When I saw that it was lasting longer, I told them, ‘run,’ and we ran hard,” she said.
“It was the most terrifying scare my daughters and I have ever experienced,” Ms. Márquez, 50, said. “I thought we wouldn’t make it out of our house.”
The quake began with a deafening noise, Josefina Hernández, 48, an administrator in Carabobo’s capital city of Valencia, said. The electricity went out immediately, she said, and everything inside her home started shifting, with the windows rattling so much it seemed they would shatter.
When she ran outside with her son, their car was still rocking from the tremors, making it difficult to drive. “You tried to run and you couldn’t,” Ms. Hernández said. “People were frantic, screaming — I mean, it was terrifying, because people were just pouring out saying, ‘What is this?’”
“I felt the most terrified I have ever felt in my entire life,” said Luisa Martínez, 68, a homemaker in Valencia. “The noise, the windows slamming open and shut, and everything creaking like never before — it was horrifying. My husband, my son, and I hugged each other and I started to pray, crying out to God to save us.”
