“Antonio, it’s your mother. I’m right here,” a woman cried out in desperation, her voice echoing through the rubble of a 22-story residential building in Caracas that collapsed after two powerful earthquakes struck Venezuela on Wednesday.
Neighbors stood by helplessly as one person climbed over the debris, calling out for any sign of life but receiving only silence in return.
“We need flashlights,” one volunteer said as residents formed a small search effort, joined by a single police officer while they waited for rescue teams to arrive.
“Tania, Tania,” another voice called into the wreckage at the Petunia residential complex in Los Palos Grandes, a normally lively upscale neighborhood known for its restaurants and cafes, now reduced to silence and dust.
One man wept quietly in the street.
At around 6:00 p.m. local time (10:00 p.m. GMT), two earthquakes struck the same part of Venezuela in quick succession.
The tremors, measuring magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5 according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), caused buildings to crumble across the capital, sending residents into the streets.
Twenty aftershocks followed, according to interim leader Delcy Rodriguez, while Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said the states of Trujillo, Carabobo, Miranda and La Guaira were among the hardest hit.
It remains unclear whether there were any fatalities. Cabello reported injuries but did not provide a number.
The strongest tremors in Venezuela’s recent earthquake history occurred in the northeast in 1997, killing 73 people, and in Caracas in 1967, when 236 people died.
Los Palos Grandes was also badly affected in the 1967 quake, when entire buildings collapsed.
Just a few blocks away, people exiting a shopping center were in shock.
“The stairs came away, the whole wall cracked. Things fell from the ceiling. It was horrible,” said 54-year-old bank employee Odalis Escalona.
Zenia Gonzalez, 52, comforted a teenage girl who was still in tears.
“We waited for it to pass and then ran down the escalator,” Gonzalez told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“We had to wait because it was shaking too much. It lasted a long time,” she added.
Panicked screams filled the air as people rushed out of the building.
In the nearby neighborhood of La Castellana, Maria Romero also fled her apartment in a hurry.
“It was moving a lot and sounded like a deep roar,” the 48-year-old engineer told AFP, adding that she had initially hesitated over what to do.
“For a second I thought about getting under the table, but I decided to get out,” she said.
Buildings across the city were damaged, while Rodriguez declared a state of emergency and announced the country’s main airport had been closed due to “severe damage” following the quakes.
Shortly after Venezuela’s twin tremors, another powerful earthquake struck northern Japan, the country’s weather agency said, with no casualties or material damage reported.
