Venezuela Earthquakes Leave Deep Destruction, With Fears Thousands Are Still Trapped

The earthquakes that struck Venezuela overnight (between Wednesday and Thursday) had left, as of Thursday evening Israel time, 164 dead and 971 injured who were pulled from the rubble. Rescue officials in the country fear that thousands are still trapped.

The two quakes, one after the other just one minute apart, were measured at magnitudes of 7.2 and 7.5 on the Richter scale. The local Interior Ministry confirmed that about 10 seconds before the first powerful quake, public alerts were activated on cellular networks.

Guaira state, in the center of the country, home to a major city of the same name, has been hit the hardest. Hundreds of buildings, including high-rises, partially or completely collapsed. Many buildings in the capital, Caracas, near Guaira state, also suffered heavy damage.

So far, foreign teams from several countries have arrived in the country to help rescue victims from the wreckage. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is in Bahrain, said that the United States has deployed search-and-rescue teams to the South American country.

The international organization "Firefighters Without Borders" sent dozens of firefighters to assist local forces in Venezuela. Spain announced that medical teams and rescue teams, including rescue and search dogs, are on their way to the area, as are the Netherlands, Sweden, and France. The three countries sent dozens of firefighters, medical teams, and rescue personnel.

The U.S. Geological Survey noted that both quakes were strongly felt across a very wide area that included not only Venezuela but also the island nations of Curaçao and Aruba, located in the Caribbean Sea off Venezuela’s coast. The tremors were also felt in several regions of Colombia, located east of Guaira state. According to the institute, two powerful earthquakes occurring within such a short time are considered a rare event, since usually one major quake is followed by aftershocks of lower intensity.

Lucia Lozano, a seismologist with Spain’s national seismic network, explained that a "seismic doublet," the term for two strong earthquakes occurring within a short time, happens when "two earthquakes of very similar magnitude overlap one another, occurring very close together in time and in very close proximity." The earthquakes in Venezuela, measuring 7.2 and 7.5, occurred 40 seconds apart, at distances of 23 and 28 kilometers from the town of Yumare, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

"This is not especially common. It is more common to have one main earthquake that ruptures along an entire fault, releasing all the stress that has built up in the Earth’s crust in the form of a rupture. But this can sometimes trigger other earthquakes on another segment of the same fault, or on a very nearby fault, as happened now in Venezuela. What this suggests is that this entire rupture zone is very complex, with interaction processes between faults, and that is why two such large earthquakes can occur."