Residents across Venezuela’s capital and surrounding cities described scenes of absolute chaos and terror on Wednesday evening as two massive earthquakes struck the region, causing buildings to collapse, widespread power outages, and intense structural damage.
In the city of San Felipe, located near the epicenter, 24-year-old María Barco described a violent tremor that lasted between 60 and 90 seconds. The quake caused the rear section of her home to collapse, leaving her family displaced and without electricity or internet access.
While the full scale of the catastrophe remained unclear Wednesday night, the severity of the event was unprecedented. According to U.S. monitoring agencies, the second quake registered a magnitude of 7.5—the strongest to hit the country since 1900—following a 7.2-magnitude tremor that occurred less than a minute prior.
In San Felipe, terrified residents flooded the streets in a panic, with many choosing to spend the night outdoors for fear of aftershocks. Lourdes Azuaje, 37, recounted fleeing her home in a towel after feeling the walls and ceiling shake during a shower. She noted that a portion of her neighbor’s roof had also collapsed.
In Caracas, emergency crews worked through the night in the El Paraíso neighborhood, where a six-story residential building collapsed. National Guard, police, and Civil Protection officers navigated the rubble, calling out for missing residents while urging anxious crowds to remain silent to help locate survivors. While a young girl and a dog were successfully rescued, the number of people still trapped beneath the debris remains unknown.
The terror extended to Naguanagua in Carabobo state, where 50-year-old Yohana Márquez described the harrowing moment she realized the shaking would not stop. “I told my daughters, ‘run,’ and we ran hard,” she recalled. “I thought we wouldn’t make it out of our house.”
In the city of Valencia, administrator Josefina Hernández, 48, said the quake began with a deafening roar, followed by an immediate power failure. She described windows rattling violently and the ground shaking so intensely that it was difficult to walk or drive. “People were frantic, screaming,” she said.
Luisa Martínez, a 68-year-old homemaker in Valencia, echoed the sentiment of horror. “The noise, the windows slamming open and shut, and everything creaking like never before—it was horrifying,” she said, recalling how she clung to her husband and son in prayer as the earth shook.
