SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Venezuela has been hit by one of the strongest earthquakes in its recorded history. Two powerful quakes, measuring magnitude 7.2 and 7.5, struck the capital city just 39 seconds apart on Wednesday evening, causing buildings to collapse and damaging critical infrastructure. Emergency crews are assessing the scale of the devastation. Authorities have yet to release an estimate on the number of people killed or injured. A few minutes ago, I spoke to journalist Maria Graterol in Caracas.
Maria, what were you seeing? What were you feeling when the earthquake struck?
MARIA GRATEROL: Well, when the earthquake started, I was in my house, and it was, like, super hard. It was - I mean, before, I had not experienced something like that. You could see how the walls were moving and everything was moving around, too. So we, as far as we could, we got out of the apartment and we went to a - like, to a square. And there were a lot of people in there. People were screaming because it was really, really, really hard, and it lasted, like - I don't know - like, about 30 seconds or more. Right now, there are no official reports about damages, about people who may have died. But, well, I imagine that we will have those reports soon.
DETROW: Yeah. In the meantime, tell me what you've seen yourself, what you're seeing around you in terms of damage.
GRATEROL: Well, there are buildings - walls have fallen and there are some buildings that they have no walls. Some others - they are completely on the floor. When you go into the buildings, there's water running on the floors because some pipes are broken or got broken. So that's what we have been seeing right now. We see people out in the streets. They are, like, in groups, with their families, with their pets, cats, and, well, they are basically waiting outside the buildings and outside their houses. And they are covered with some sweaters. They have some blankets, too. And they are just, you know, like, trying to wait for something because they cannot really enter their houses in some of the areas of the city.
DETROW: My understanding is that earthquakes of this magnitude are pretty rare in Venezuela, and there's a lot of concern that just a lot of the buildings would not have had the infrastructure, the code requirements to withstand an earthquake. Is that what people are worried about?
GRATEROL: Yes. I mean, they're worried because we know that the government in the past hasn't done, like, a lot to help people in this context, no? So they're expecting, like, some agents or some officers from the government to visit the places to really check if it's - I mean, like, the places are safe so they can go back to their houses, to their homes. But we don't know if that's going to happen. There are reports of people - I mean, you can see on the WhatsApp groups, like, hey, this is the name of my brother, this is the name of my sister who was in the building that collapsed. Can you please try to help me find this person? And so far, we haven't seen, like, these groups, like groups of civil protection, for example, that help people in these natural disaster contexts. We haven't seen them yet, but I imagine that at some point, they will go and visit places to see if they can actually help people get out of the places where they're stuck or something like that.
DETROW: That's journalist Maria Graterol joining us from Caracas. Thank you so much, and stay safe.
GRATEROL: Thank you to you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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