Venezuela earthquakes – Venezuela’s twin earthquakes have killed at least 1,430 people and injured more than 3,200, with hundreds still missing. Engineers say the disaster has followed long-standing warnings about soft ground, weak seismic reinforcement, and inadequate oversight—fact
Caracas woke up to a kind of damage experts had spent years warning about: tall concrete buildings failing on soft soil, collapsing in ways that suggested construction deficiencies were not just a technical flaw, but a life-and-death risk.
On Wednesday. two massive quakes struck back-to-back. damaging or collapsing scores of buildings from Caracas. the capital. to the coast and elsewhere. The death toll reached at least 1. 430. with more than 3. 200 injured. and hundreds remained missing as rescuers searched for survivors buried under rubble.
For structural engineer Eduardo Núñez Castellanos, the hardest part is how familiar the warnings were. “The risk was known. ” said Núñez Castellanos. a Venezuelan structural engineer and associate professor who leads the Department of Civil Engineering at the Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción in Chile.
The scale of the tragedy is on track to make the disaster Venezuela’s deadliest in more than a century, surpassing the estimated 1,600 deaths from the magnitude 6.7 Cumaná earthquake and tsunami of 1929.
Geophysics professor Michael Schmitz. at Simón Bolívar University and Central University of Venezuela. said he feared casualties could reach 50. 000. He pointed to the midpoint of the most likely range estimated by the U.S. Geological Survey, which gave a 44% chance the death toll could fall between 10,000 and 100,000.
“It’s still early to draw definitive conclusions for why the damage. and death toll. were so high. ” Núñez said. But initial photos. he said. appear to show collapsed buildings “in some cases higher than 15 stories. ” alongside “significant construction deficiencies and poor supervision during the construction phase.”.
One culprit. according to Núñez. is the way some structures were built to meet investor and budget demands rather than seismic risk. He said the widespread damage reflects building construction “adapted to investors’ needs rather than structures properly designed and constructed in accordance with seismic code requirements.” He added. “Unfortunately. this is a common problem in Latin America.”.
That warning is grounded in prior research. Núñez coauthored a study published in 2023 in the journal Buildings that examined concrete buildings higher than 20 stories built to minimum Venezuelan code requirements. The study found that when those buildings were placed on soft soils. they had a more than 80% chance of collapse when shaken violently in an earthquake. Núñez said the situation “may be even more critical for buildings designed according to older codes.”.
Outdated standards and a build-on-the-cheap ethos are not the only forces at work, he said. Contributing factors also include concrete buildings designed without accounting for local soft-soil conditions. using a type of structural system in buildings taller than 10 stories that is vulnerable to earthquakes. and. “most critically. insufficient oversight during the construction process due to weakened institutional supervision.”.
Núñez said that “institutional control existed in the past,” but that it has deteriorated under the current governing authorities.
Alejandro Giuliano, a former director of Venezuela’s National Institute of Seismic Prevention, put the issue more bluntly. A day after the twin quakes. Giuliano told the Venezuelan broadcaster Radio Mil20. “The problem is a lack of control in building standards. It’s fundamental that the norms of seismic-resistance construction are respected.” He added, “One cannot be surprised at this event.”.
Giuliano said Venezuela has a history of large earthquakes and that not having a mass-casualty quake in more than a quarter-century was “no excuse.”
In the days after Wednesday’s shaking began, analysts and researchers focused on what structures failed most visibly. Ramón Mata Lemus. lead author of the 2023 study and an assistant professor in seismic behavior at Universidad San Sebastián in Chile. said the worst damage appeared to hit older concrete frame buildings. masonry buildings. and informal hillside construction.
Mata also pointed to “soft-story” buildings—structures where the ground floor is flimsier than the floors above. making toppling more likely in a quake. He said the most severe cases involved “complete or partial building collapses. ” often linked to soft-story mechanisms in buildings with open ground floors. as well as slab and balcony failures in multi-story residential structures. Mata added that ceiling and slabs have collapsed in public and residential areas. pavement has ruptured. masonry walls have cracked. and facades fell off buildings.
The danger was never simply about when earthquakes would come. Venezuela sits on the edge of a giant east-west fault that forms the boundary between the Caribbean and South American tectonic plates. International researchers. however. have concentrated more on the northern edge of the Caribbean plate than on the southern edge and Venezuela’s seismic consequences. despite the country’s vulnerability.
The northern edge has a brutal record: movement there triggered a magnitude 7 earthquake in 2010 in Haiti that killed 316,000 people.
Caracas, meanwhile, has been shaken before. The last big quake to dramatically rattle the capital was in 1967, when a magnitude 6.6 left 240 people dead. There was also a magnitude 6.4 quake in 2009, though its offshore epicenter was farther away from the city.
Farther east, a magnitude 7 earthquake in 1997 resulted in 81 deaths, hitting the cities of Cumaná and Carupano, according to the USGS.
Older still is the catastrophe in 1812, estimated at magnitude 7.7, which Schmitz said may have killed more than 15,000 people. Estimates indicate that one-fourth of the population of Caracas died from that quake, according to Schmitz.
Wednesday’s sequence began with a magnitude 7.5 earthquake—followed by the second quake just 39 seconds later. The USGS said the double event is thought to have ruptured about 100 miles of fault.
Schmitz said the first fault that fractured is believed to be on the Boconó system, about 25 miles from the coast. He said the rupture raced from the valley down to the sea, transferring movement to the San Sebastián fault, which separates the Caribbean plate from the South American plate.
“It seems that this rupture was directed from southwest to northeast, and then completely east,” Schmitz said, adding that it stopped just short of the port city of La Guaira, north of Caracas.
According to USGS shaking intensity maps, the quake sent shaking energy directly toward both the international airport, which was heavily damaged, and then into the port city. “This probably caused the very heavy damage we have in La Guaira, with maybe up to 100 buildings collapsed,” Schmitz said.
Even so, researchers said older buildings were especially at risk. Buildings constructed before the early 1980s—particularly those built before the 1967 earthquake—“don’t have much earthquake-resistant engineering,” Schmitz added.
Still, even experts searching for answers in La Guaira said not everything is fully explained yet. Feliciano De Santis, president of the Venezuelan Geological Society, said La Guaira will be a focus for scientists because the collapse rate there is “truly abnormal.”
De Santis said factors likely include older buildings that do not meet modern seismic standards. as well as hidden defects or structural vulnerabilities. Other issues. he said. will likely be examined in detail: the construction of buildings ranging from low-income housing to luxury developments with cheap materials and without proper permits.
He also pointed to building maintenance problems, water leaks, structural overloading, corruption related to issuing permits, and the broader chaotic state of affairs across much of government.
Venezuela has been engulfed in economic and political turmoil for more than a decade. Even under more than a quarter-century of socialist governance, providing cheap housing for poor and working-class Venezuelans—the longtime base of ruling-party support—remained central.
Schmitz said some collapsed buildings in La Guaira were built through government programs, and he said, “we always had some doubts about the reliability of the structures.”
Before Wednesday’s quakes, Schmitz had been trying to apply seismic science in a way that could reduce harm. He conducted a study. published in 2020. to help identify areas around Caracas to prioritize buildings that should be retrofitted. saying neighborhoods that suffered severe damage would have been high-priority areas.
Installing seismic protections, he said, hasn’t been a priority for a government in economic free-fall. Schmitz proposed a similar seismic study for La Guaira.
“I had been asking for funding for about six or seven years, but I didn’t manage to get it,” Schmitz said.
As rescue crews continue digging through wreckage, the engineering record has taken on a new weight—less as an academic warning, and more as an account of how easily known vulnerabilities can become catastrophic when the ground finally shakes.
Venezuela earthquakes Caracas La Guaira structural engineering seismic safety soft soil building collapse seismic code USGS estimate