Two massive, back-to-back earthquakes struck Venezuela Wednesday evening, leaving widespread destruction in their wake. Acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez confirmed fatalities and declared a state of emergency.
The first quake, a magnitude 7.2 foreshock, rocked the city of San Felipe as it struck nearby shortly after 6 p.m. Eastern Time. A second quake with a magnitude of 7.5 tore through another city in the same state of Yaracuy, just 40 seconds later.
Videos showed people rushing out of buildings, screaming. After the quakes, videos show them walking through the devastated streets, shell-shocked. Hundreds of emergency workers are racing to find and rescue victims of the quake.
A survivor of the 1967 earthquake in Caracas told CNN in an interview that this quake was far worse than what he had experienced decades ago.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Manuel Guevara Baro. “I lived through the earthquake in Caracas in 1967, which was an earthquake that also had many victims, but was nothing like this earthquake we lived today.”
Guevara Baro was reading a book in his ninth-floor apartment when the earthquake shook his building so intensely that he could not grab onto anything to steady himself.
“I could not even walk because of the intensity of the movement,” he said. But he and other residents managed to get out, despite the power outage and falling water due to smashed plumbing.
Two buildings in his neighborhood collapsed and many others sustained heavy damage, he said.
“It was truly horrible, terrifying,” he said.
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