Venezuela’s interim leader declared a state of emergency Wednesday as two massive earthquakes caused buildings in the capital to crumble and forced the closure of the country’s main airport.<\/p>\n
Delcy Rodr\u00edguez said 20 aftershocks had followed the earthquakes of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5, which struck the same area of Venezuela, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).<\/p>\n
The quakes triggered panic in the capital and drove people into the streets, journalists saw.<\/p>\n
\u00abThe stairs came away, the whole wall cracked. Things fell from the ceiling. It was horrible,\u00bb said 54-year-old bank employee Odalis Escalona.<\/p>\n
It remained unknown if there were fatalities, but some people were injured and buildings had collapsed, Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said earlier.<\/p>\n
An AFP journalist saw a 22-story building completely destroyed in the capital’s Altamira neighbourhood, where people cried out relatives’ names as volunteers climbed over the rubble.<\/p>\n
\u00abWe need flashlights,\u00bb one of them said.<\/p>\n
The first quake, with an epicentre 21 kilometres (13 miles) west of the coastal town of Mor\u00f3n, occurred at 2204 GMT, USGS said. Within a minute, a 7.5-magnitude quake struck about 45 kilometres away.<\/p>\n
\u00abThis earthquake was the second event in a doublet. This magnitude 7.5 mainshock was preceded by 39 seconds by a 7.2 foreshock,\u00bb USGS said.<\/p>\n
Cabello asked people to leave their homes, adding that gas supplies had been cut to several buildings as a precaution.<\/p>\n
\u00abWe have some damaged structures and we don’t want any kind of accident involving gas to occur,\u00bb he said.<\/p>\n
The Maiquet\u00eda International Airport, located in La Guaira, near Caracas, was closed due to \u00abserious damage\u00bb to its infrastructure, Rodriguez said, with social media posts showing its severely damaged facilities.<\/p>\n
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‘We couldn’t get out’<\/strong><\/p>\n At a depth of 22 kilometres and 10 kilometres respectively, the tremors prompted screams of panic at a shopping centre\u00a0in Caracas, an AFP journalist observed.<\/p>\n \u00abIt was unbelievable, I don’t even know how long it lasted,\u00bb said shopkeeper Heidi Romero, who was on the top floor of the shopping centre\u00a0when the quake struck.<\/p>\n \u00abWe went out through the emergency stairs; that’s how they got us out,\u00bb the 42-year-old told AFP.<\/p>\n Dozens more in the capital exited buildings and waited outside before returning to their offices and homes.<\/p>\n Carmen Gu\u00e9dez, 69, was in the same room as her bedridden sister when she felt the jolt.<\/p>\n \u00abIt kept getting stronger,\u00bb said the administrator, who lives in a hilly middle-class neighbourhood above the capital. \u00abI started to see the windows begin to move and then everything shook.\u00bb<\/p>\n She described how she \u00abhuddled together\u00bb with her sister and a neighbour, adding that \u00abwe couldn’t get out. The neighbours are still out on the street.\u00bb<\/p>\n The states of Trujillo, Carabobo, Miranda and La Guaira were the hardest hit, according to Cabello.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Further afield<\/strong><\/p>\n The quake was felt as far away as the Colombian capital of Bogot\u00e1, where alarms sounded and some residents evacuated buildings as a precaution.<\/p>\n Freddy Tovar, coordinator of Colombia’s National Seismological Network, said they had received more than 200 reports of tremors nationwide.<\/p>\n \u00abThe conditions of this seismic event mean that some aftershocks may occur, which could also be widely felt across Colombian territory,\u00bb he said in a video posted on X.<\/p>\n The Colombian disaster management agency UNGRD ruled out the possibility of a tsunami taking place in the aftermath.<\/p>\n \u00abNO tsunami, NO danger from a recent earthquake,\u00bb the US National Tsunami Warning Center said in an X post.<\/p>\n The strongest tremors in earthquake-prone Venezuela’s recent history occurred in the northeast in 1997, killing 73 people, and in Caracas in 1967, when 236 people died.<\/p>\n Shortly after Venezuela’s twin quakes on Wednesday, a 6.9 magnitude tremor hit northern Japan, the country’s weather agency said, with no casualties or material damage reported.<\/p>\n by Leticia Pineda from Caracas, AFP<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\nrelated news<\/h6>\n<\/p>\n<\/section>\n