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Thursday morning, Billy Ebrin set out to find the bodies.
He stayed for a short time, worried in his silver Aveo car, too scared to return to his seventh-floor apartment in Caracas, Venezuela.
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A few hours earlier, he was startled by the alarm on his cell phone. There was an uncomfortable pause. Then, the building began to shake violently.
His three dogs jumped under the beds, scared and trembling, while Ebrin hid under the door and began to pray.
He said: “I thought I was going to die.”
Two back-to-back earthquakes hit Venezuela with little warning shortly after 6pm local time (22:00 GMT) on Wednesday, causing panic as people sought shelter.
The first was a magnitude 7.2 earthquake, followed by another that measured 7.5 on the nine-point Richter scale, both of which were considered major earthquake disasters.
After the shaking stopped, Ebrin ran to the ground along with hundreds of other people fleeing their homes.
“People were fighting each other in the chaos: old people, people carrying their pets, even squirrels and parrots. There were people in their underwear,” he told Al Jazeera. “It was all scary.”
Near Ebrin’s home, many people were sleeping on the streets or in their cars after being warned not to enter their homes. When he awoke, if he slept at all, he found the small rooms crushed into piles of concrete and twisted metal, and rescue workers searched for signs of life beneath the rubble.
One of the areas most affected by the crisis is the area of La Guaira, in the extreme north of Caracas, where rows of houses collapsed.
The Venezuelan Parliament has confirmed that at least 188 people have died in the country. But the United States Geological Survey predicts that the number of people killed could reach thousands.
Vice President Delcy Rodriguez called on international organizations and the Venezuelan private sector to support the rescue operation. Several countries have said they have sent aid, including Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, the US, Qatar and Argentina.
“We have one very important goal: to save lives. All of us as a country, we will deal with this problem,” Rodriguez wrote on the X channel.
But many know it’s a race against time to find the unaccounted for, while voices still echo beneath the rubble. Telephone lines and electricity were down for many people, although some services have resumed in some areas, driving families to find out about their loved ones.
Through WhatsApp, Facebook, X and other platforms, pictures of missing family members quickly spread: elderly parents, young children, cousins, friends and neighbors whose phones went silent after the earthquakes.
Radio X’s social network was partially shut down by other internet providers following the quake, amid an outcry for more information.
Andres Azpurua, director of the digital freedom organization Ve sin Filtro, explained that the website, along with many others, was closed in 2024 after the presidential election of that year, which former President Nicolas Maduro believed to have lost.
At the time, Maduro sought to limit the spread of information that contradicted his claims to a third term.
But earlier this year, on January 3, the US launched a military operation to capture and arrest Maduro. Public pressure, meanwhile, has forced Rodriguez’s government to lift restrictions after Tuesday’s crash.
“The government saw a lot of problems in social networks to open X and other platforms mainly because of the urgency to get information,” said Azpurua.
He also said that some people wanted to increase the US influence in Venezuela, after Maduro was removed. “Many of these calls have been directed to the US embassy in Venezuela, asking them to get Rodriguez out of jail.”
A website has now also been launched to register missing persons.
While many families are still searching for their loved ones, some consider themselves lucky to have escaped with only minor injuries.
“When the phone rang as an alarm, everything happened very quickly. The shaking was very strong. I almost stopped a piece of the wall from falling on my father,” said Renny Vargas who lives in Caracas. “We didn’t know what to do, I told my father to calm down, stay with me there and not move, it was scary.”
Mairyn Cedeno lives in Caracas parish of Caricuao and says something fell on her leg, hitting her hard.
“I don’t know what happened to me because many things were falling, the walls of the building were damaged and electrical equipment fell,” he said.
Venezuela has modern towers mixed with rich districts, but it also has many old blocks, countless buildings and structures that have suffered from years of economic problems, lack of funding and maintenance.
Venezuela sits on the boundary between two tectonic plates, and earthquakes are not uncommon. But fatal accidents are rare.
The country was hit by a terrible earthquake in 1967, which measured 6.7 on the Richter scale and killed 300 people.
Another terrible earthquake occurred in 1997, and about 80 people died.
As attention turns to salvage efforts to the point of destruction, engineers are beginning to examine why some buildings suffered more than others – and whether the country was adequately prepared, given the high frequency of earthquakes.
Jesus Vasquez is a Caracas-based engineer and director of the NGO Ciudadania Sin Limites, a Venezuelan civil society organization that focuses on urban development and human resource evaluation.
He explained that the old buildings and the way they were built will have a major impact on the damage. But starting in the 1950s, buildings that followed the rules were built to withstand earthquakes.
“This means that the structure is designed to move, rather than to be fixed, so it can absorb earthquakes,” Vasquez said.
He also said that a lot of damage has been done to the houses, including cracks in the walls and damage to the internal parts of the houses. But other parts of Caracas, including Los Palos Grandes and Chacao, have been severely affected.
“They are built on soft ground, on mud that is deposited over time by the rains. When there is a movement of the soil, the sand and the mud move a lot, where most of the effects of Caracas have occurred. The soil there moves more than the place built on the rock,” Vasquez explained.
But he said the danger of Wednesday’s destruction should not happen.
“Buildings are designed so that they don’t collapse, buildings can be damaged, but not in a way that puts people’s lives at risk.
There is also concern about the ability of health services to cope with the growing number of casualties, especially after years of underinvestment.
On Thursday, schools were closed, and the Caracas metro suspended its operations, as rail services were suspended.
Schools are also being used as emergency shelters, and as rescue workers continue to search through collapsed buildings on Thursday, thousands of people don’t know when, or if, they will be able to return home.
