‘Paralysed by fear’: Venezuelans tell of escape and loss after huge earthquakes

As a double whammy of powerful earthquakes rattled Venezuela’s northern coast on Wednesday, residents of the capital, Caracas, scrambled out on to the streets from shuddering, fractured buildings. “It was horrible. I felt like the house was moving to a different rhythm to the earth. I had to carry my mum out. She was paralysed by fear,” said 18-year-old Sebastian Rodríguez, whose family runs a shop in Centro Plaza, a brutalist commercial centre in the affluent neighbourhood of Los Palos Grandes. The robust reinforced concrete structure of the shopping centre – an architectural gem built at the peak of Venezuela’s 1970s oil boom – appeared to have been spared major damage, but the surrounding area had been far less fortunate. A collapsed apartment building in Los Palos Grandes, an affluent neighbourhood of Caracas. Photograph: Jesús Vargas/Getty Images At least three buildings in Los Palos Grandes and neighbouring Altamira collapsed during the 7.2- and 7.5-magnitude quakes that struck within a minute of each other shortly after 6pm local time. As night fell, emergency workers, volunteers and the relatives of victims rushed to the scene hoping to find survivors in the wreckage of residential buildings that had been reduced to a mangle of masonry and steel. “There is so much rubble,” gasped Jessica Galvis​, 33, a critical care physician, who was waiting for news outside one fallen six-floor building where she believed a female friend had been buried. …