Why Venezuela’s Second Earthquake Destroyed Buildings

Veronica Cañas hard she had time to grab her 6-year-old son and put on his shoes before leaving her house in Caracas. As he descended the stairs, the walls began to crumble and part of the wall began to collapse. A few kilometers from Altamira, 50-year-old Eduardo Burger watched one building shake as another collapsed.

None of them knew that this was not one terrible and wonderful earthquake. On June 24, Venezuela met with a seismic doublet that he saw 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude earthquakes occur only 39 seconds apart. The first earthquake occurred with its epicenter in Yaracuy. A few seconds later, another powerful earthquake shook the same area.

All this happened at a deep level a distance of 10 to 20 kilometers (6 and 12 kilometers), which caused the force to reach the surface with great force and allowed the seismic waves to be felt as far away as Colombia, northern Brazil, and several Caribbean islands such as Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao. Although only one would have been destroyed, it was a one-two punch that caused events that collapsed many buildings and made it difficult to rescue survivors as people died.

Technical Description: Tectonic Plates, Faults, and Resonance

“The table in the dining room started to shake… We thought it was an earthquake; then it started to shake a lot. The walls were cracking, and pieces of the ceiling were falling. We thought it was going to fall on top of us,” Cañas says.

He and his family were able to reach the playground near the house, where other neighbors had started to gather. There, he was hit by another earthquake.

“We all hugged each other, because of fear, because we are not used to it.” In Mexico and Chile, there is a culture of preparing for earthquakes, and people are already prepared when the alarm goes off or they hear movements, but we don’t,” he says.

Cañas’ experience shows a stark contrast between Venezuela and other countries with high earthquakes. Although the country is located on the border of the Caribbean Plate and the South American Plate, earthquakes of this type do not occur very often.

Alan Damián Sánchez Pulido, an architect from the Ibero-American University in Mexico and an expert in structural damage research, explains that the location and movement of these plates is why earthquakes are not as common as they are in other areas – and why they are so powerful when they do occur.

“In Venezuela, the connection between the mountains of the Caribbean and South America includes movement in parallel; that is what may have caused two earthquakes of its magnitude to occur in quick succession,” he says.

Unlike Mexico, where the Cocos Plate passes under the North American Plate, in Venezuela, the movement has different results. Sánchez Pulido said: “It is very rare, but probably not zero. It can happen anywhere in the world where there is a connection between tectonic plates.

The surprise was not only that two major earthquakes have occurred but that the second one happened just 39 seconds after the first one. For Sánchez Pulido, this small area caused the most earthquake damage.

“Many houses were destroyed by the first earthquake.” This does not mean that the damage was great, but every damage changes the character it was originally designed for.