Venezuela quake survivors describe devastation: "Everything collapsed"

Survivors of the catastrophic earthquakes in Venezuela — including a journalist who was in a Caracas elevator when the first temblor struck — recounted scenes of devastation as "everything collapsed." The man in the elevator, journalist Tony Frangie, told "CBS Mornings" that the quake was "quite terrifying." He had been on his way to watch a World Cup match with friends on Wednesday and was just leaving his building when the shaking started. "I started to pray and to press every button, waiting for it to open up," Frangie said. The elevator let him out in the building's basement. When he went outside, he saw that the structure was shaking. The building stayed standing, he said, and he spent the next several hours waiting as neighbors and family came downstairs. At first, he didn't realize how big it was. But when he went online, he learned that two earthquakes, one with a magnitude of 7.2 and the other 7.5, had struck west of Caracas. The quakes are the strongest to hit Venezuela in over a century, and were so powerful that the shaking could be felt in parts of Colombia and Brazil. They also sparked tsunami alerts. Rescuers search for victims in a collapsed building following an earthquake in Caracas, Venezuela, on June 24, 2026. Manaure Quintero /AFP via Getty Images La Guaira, a state on the country's northern coast, was the hardest hit, Venezuela's Acting President Delcy Rodríguez said. …