Special Report: Earthquakes in Venezuela

Special Report  |  On June 24, two massive earthquakes—magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5—struck Venezuela just seconds apart, destroying hundreds of buildings and leaving tens of thousands of people dead, missing, or homeless. 

In this episode, I examine the scale of the destruction, the regime’s disastrous response, and the ordinary Venezuelans who were forced to dig through the rubble and organize relief efforts themselves. 

Link to verified organizations providing assistance in Venezuela can be found here: https://donarseguro.com/en 

Transcript

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Hi. This week's episode is going to be different. At this point, I'm sure you've heard about the catastrophic earthquakes that hit Venezuela on June 24th. Venezuelans, myself included, are devastated, looking for any possible way to help to contribute. For those of us who live abroad, we face a particularly difficult situation. Because outside Venezuela, life goes on as usual, apart from a news report here and there. We get up every day to go to work, we go to the grocery store, we live amid all this normalcy as the situation back home continues to spiral into pain and desperation. So it seemed inappropriate to simply continue with the next episode of this podcast as if nothing had changed. Because everything has changed. Right now, even as Venezuela receives thoughts and prayers and shipments of international aid, people are suffering. And they're suffering not only because of a natural disaster. They're suffering because the dictatorship that remains in power has not only failed to respond, but appears to be actively prioritizing its own survival over the lives of its people. My hope with this episode is to help you understand the magnitude and gravity of what is happening in Venezuela at this very moment, and how it connects to the decades of destruction documented throughout this podcast. Here we go. On Wednesday, June 24th, two massive earthquakes hit Venezuela, almost right next to the country's capital, Caracas. The first was a magnitude 7.2 earthquake, followed just 39 seconds later by a magnitude 7.5 quake. And those numbers might be difficult to understand, because the earthquake magnitude scale is not linear, it's logarithmic. A magnitude 7.2 earthquake releases roughly 63 times more energy than a magnitude 6. It's an enormous, major earthquake capable of causing catastrophic destruction on its own. And a magnitude 7.5 is just three-tenths a point higher, which makes it look like a small difference on paper, but it means that the second earthquake released nearly three times as much energy as the first. Now add to that the fact that the second quake began just seconds after the first, and you have a recipe for a catastrophe on an unimaginable scale. Buildings were still violently moving from the first earthquake when the second, much stronger one hit. The first quake had already placed enormous pressure on their columns, walls, and structural joints. Concrete had begun to crack, and before those buildings could even stop swaying, they were struck by another, even more powerful wave. Every violent movement forces a building from side to side, repeatedly bending and straining the structure in opposite directions. Once its supports have been weakened, the next movement could cause one floor to give way, bringing everything above it crashing down. Hundreds of buildings in and around the Capitol collapse within seconds. These were almost all apartment buildings, many six to eight stories high, filled with families who had no chance to get out before the floors above and below them collapsed. Videos of the Caracas skyline after the earthquake show massive plumes of brown dust rising between the buildings as the debris from collapsed structures filled the air. The closest visual comparison that I can make is to the scenes from Lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001, the skyline disappearing behind enormous clouds of dust and smoke. Buildings also collapsed in other cities, but some of the most apocalyptic scenes came from La Guayra, less than an hour's drive from Caracas. La Guayra is a coastal state directly north of the capital. It's where Venezuela's main international airport is located. Hundreds of thousands of people live there, many of them concentrated in dense coastal communities and multi-story apartment buildings. In La Guayra alone, more than 200 buildings collapsed, turning the state into ground zero of this disaster. Videos filmed from cars moving through the area show entire streets reduced to ruins, piles of rubble still burning where apartment buildings once stood. And in the background, behind the voices of people calling for help, you could hear children crying. These three people, Delcy Rodriguez, Jorge Rodriguez, and Dioslado Cabello, have emerged as the leaders of the post Maludo regime. It was no coincidence that they were all standing there together. But beyond the symbolism, there was almost nothing. The regime announced that the international airport would be closed after suffering massive structural damage, but there was no national rescue plan, no announcement of a large-scale deployment of the National Guard or the armed forces, no explanation on how the government intended to reach the disaster zones, rescue those trapped beneath the rubble, or care for the thousands of people who had just lost their homes. Nothing. And the reason was simple. There was no plan. There was never a plan. From the moment Hugo Chavez came to power in 1999 until today, there has been one constant thread running through the Chavista regime: extreme corruption, repression, and mismanagement. The state lost its capacity to perform even the most basic responsibilities more than a decade ago. Across Venezuela, entire communities have had no reliable access to running water. Electricity blackouts occur weekly, and in some places, every day. The public healthcare system barely functions. In public hospitals, patients are expected to purchase their own medicine, medical equipment, syringes, gauze, and even band-aids before they can receive treatment. Doctors sometimes operate using the flashlights on their phones because the electricity cuts out without warning. And all of this was happening before the earthquakes. The people responsible for hollowing out the Venezuelan state were the same three people now standing before the cameras, pretending to lead it through the worst disaster in the country's modern history. That institutional destruction is why there is no organized response in the immediate aftermath of the earthquakes. There was no functioning national emergency system, no coordinated protocol, and no prepared rescue force capable of responding to destruction on this scale. And that's horrifying, because the first hours after a disaster like this are the most critical. Every hour that passes means another person trapped beneath the rubble dying from blood loss, dehydration, suffocation, or injuries that might otherwise have been survivable. That night, and throughout the following day, no organized force arrived in many of the disaster zones. In some places, police officers and firefighters did show up, and many of them acted heroically, but they were woefully unequipped. There were videos of firefighters searching through collapsed buildings using the lights on their phones because they had not been provided flashlights. Just think about that. They had no flashlights. And that is why the Venezuelan people immediately stepped in. Using their bare hands, ordinary citizens began lifting pieces of debris themselves. They worked together to locate people trapped beneath the rubble and rescue those that they could reach. It was heart-wrenching to watch. Videos showed Venezuelans climbing through the ruins of collapsed buildings with their own shovels, hammers, ropes, and household tools, digging through concrete and twisted metal to pull out their own neighbors. But there's only so much anyone can do with their bare hands. Countless people were trapped beneath concrete slabs so large that there was no possible way to reach them without cranes, excavators, and specialized rescue equipment. That was when the complete absence of the state became impossible to ignore. Where was the government? Videos quickly started spreading online of people standing in front of ruined buildings, begging the authorities to help them save their friends, families, and neighbors. They gave their exact locations. They explained what equipment was needed to reach the people trapped beneath the debris. They waited and waited, digging through the rubble, and no one came. Not a single rescue crew, not a single ambulance showed up. These videos began spreading all over social media, along with flyers and photographs of missing people. After the earthquakes, the phone networks collapsed in many areas, leaving people unable to contact their loved ones. They didn't know where they were or if their buildings were still standing. And keep in mind that almost 8 million Venezuelans had been forced to leave the country in the last several years, thanks to the same repressive, destructive government that now seems to be doing absolutely nothing in the wake of this catastrophe. Soon, many of the people who had been crying out for help stopped responding. People who were shown trapped in viral videos were dying, and the state was nowhere to be seen. Venezuelans also started creating apps to map collapsed buildings, build databases of missing people, and locate emergency centers. Literally everything that the government should have been doing, Venezuelans were doing themselves. And that raised another important question. Where was the military? And the reason I bring this up is because, as you remember from our previous episodes, the armed forces are a central component of Chavista ideology. The so-called civil military union, or union civico military.

SPEAKER_04 10:50

Unido el pueblo y su Fuerza Armada, garantizando la independencia Venezuela.

SPEAKER_00 10:56

The Chavista narrative has always been that the military and the people are one, that the armed forces represent the Venezuelan people and defend the most vulnerable sectors of society. That made the absence of any mass military deployment even more jaw-dropping. And this is where the history documented in this podcast becomes critical. Because the Venezuelan military is not a professional fighting force. It's an enormous network of corruption, patronage, and illicit activity. There are more than two thousand generals in Venezuela. They rise through the ranks not because of competence or military experience, but because of their loyalty to the regime. The higher they rise, the more access they receive to corruption, illicit wealth, and state resources. Meanwhile, the lower ranks are badly paid, heavily surveyed, poorly equipped, and forced to participate in corruption and extortion schemes directed by their superiors. In other words, the Venezuelan military is dysfunctional both as a fighting force and as a humanitarian response force. It's been organized to enrich its leaders and repress the population, not to protect the Venezuelan people. And so, during the first 24 to 48 hours, the most critical period for rescuing survivors, there was no mass deployment of troops, rescue teams, or heavy machinery. The institution that Chavismo claimed represented the union between the military and the Venezuelan people was nowhere to be seen. It wasn't until nearly forty-eight hours after the earthquakes that the regime finally began to respond. By then the criticism of its incompetence and inaction were ferocious. Civil society and opposition parties had immediately activated their networks and established donation centers across the country. Venezuelans began bringing food, water, medicine, clothing, and equipment for the disaster zones. And instead of working with them, the regime saw those efforts as a political threat. It ordered the centers to be closed or to be taken over by the state. Only the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, the regime's own political party, would be authorized to collect and distribute donations. Just think about that. People are still trapped beneath the rubble. These were still the critical hours in which survivors could be found alive, and the regime was thinking about one thing above all else: maintaining political control. The regime's first coordinated operation after the earthquakes was not a rescue operation, it was a political operation. And it was accompanied by a series of obviously staged propaganda videos. Delci Rodriguez traveled to La Guaira, but before she arrived, security forces cleared away the civilians who had been digging through the rubble. People who had spent hours searching for survivors were forced to stop and wait for Delci to record a video with the ruins of a collapsed building behind her. So instead of being used to save people, that crane was being used as a prop. And the contrast couldn't have been more obscene. Regime officials were staging carefully produced videos while Venezuelans remained trapped beneath collapsed buildings and thousands of families slept in the streets. Delsi, meanwhile, focused her cameras on the international rescue teams arriving from the countries that had stepped in to provide the expertise and equipment that her own government could not provide. Then, on Friday, nearly 48 hours after the earthquakes, Delsi announced that La Guaira would be militarized and that independent volunteers would no longer be permitted to enter the disaster zone. The official explanation was that the rescue operation needed to be organized and coordinated, but it was disorganized precisely because the regime had done nothing. And now, after abandoning Venezuelans for nearly two days, it was pushing them out. The priority was not coordination, it was control. It was also becoming clear that the regime wanted to prevent more videos and images from leaving La Guaira, because every new image made its incompetence harder to hide. People digging with their bare hands, firefighters searching through the darkness with their phones, bodies still trapped beneath the ruins. Because even in the middle of a catastrophe, even as people are dying, the survival of the regime still comes first. Venezuela is still fighting through the aftermath of this disaster. At the time I'm recording this, no one knows how many people are dead. The number continues to rise. Tens of thousands of people remain missing. Some estimates warn that the final death toll could reach 100,000. And for every building that completely collapsed, there are dozens more that are no longer safe to live in. Tens of thousands of Venezuelans have lost their homes. They have nowhere to go. Entire families are now sleeping outside, surrounded by what remains of their communities. Some people have lost everything. Some have lost everyone. At the Vargas Hospital in La Guayra, there are reports of patients asking doctors to let them die because they have nothing left to live for. Because everyone they loved was killed. It's difficult to comprehend that level of pain. For those of you listening who want to help, I'll leave links in the description of this episode to organizations providing assistance in Venezuela. I've personally verified these pages so I can guarantee that they're legitimate. Please consider donating anything if you can. Because the Venezuelan state abandoned its people a long time ago. And today, the Venezuelan people need the world's help. Thank you for listening.