> Mass VAXXECUTION in Venezuela! 100k deat!

Everyone deat!

Back-to-back powerful earthquakes slammed Venezuela on Wednesday evening, collapsing buildings in the capital of Caracas.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the first earthquake had a magnitude of 7.1 and its epicenter was west of the community of Morón, located along the country’s Caribbean coast, about 168 kilometers (104 miles) west of Caracas. The quake had a depth of 13 kilometers (8 miles).

The USGS reported an even larger 7.5-magnitude earthquake just a minute later. The second quake had a depth of 10 kilometers and its epicenter was 16 kilometers (10 miles) southwest of Morón.

The quakes are among the strongest to strike Venezuela in more than a century.

The U.S. Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a tsunami alert for Virgin Islands. Authorities in the Dominican Republic also issued one for the island. Another alert for Puerto Rico was quickly lifted.

People evacuated swaying buildings in Caracas and remained outside, many visibly shocked as they saw entire walls that had collapsed, making furniture visible from the street. Dust columns could also be seen in two neighborhoods of the capital, where restaurants and other businesses are typically busy.

Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said the quake could be felt in several states. The Altamira neighborhood in Caracas had “alarming situations” with collapsed homes and buildings, he said, suggesting people were injured in the earthquake and asking motorists to give way to ambulances and other emergency vehicles.

wrote:

Trumps Fault (get it?  Fault).

:groan:

wrote:

its epicenter was west of the community of Morón

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrum … 6040715251

Like they need any more bad luck. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XD3VnJZX4Lc

I'm going with 5K in the end.

SamplesBoi wrote:

I'm going with 5K in the end.

At least 15k. Probably 30.

Saturday the death toll rose sharply to 1,430.

Families reported at least 68,900 people missing.

Venezuelans looking for loved ones and neighbors used shovels, heavy equipment, ropes and bare hands atop mounds of toppled concrete throughout La Guaira, one of the hardest-hit states. They were joined by a growing number of international rescue teams who began to climb through the rubble, offering a small glint of hope to anguished families.

Tensions peaked over what many Venezuelans viewed as an inadequate response by the government, whose soldiers, firefighters, police and military cadets were evidently underprepared to respond to the scope of the tragedy. As if there are tens of thousands that can magically parachute it with operating heavy equipment and clean water towers. Idiots.

Venezuelan officials said 17 flights carrying more than 1,600 rescue team members had touched down by Saturday.

Dust coated coastal communities. In punishing heat, more people wore masks as the stench of decomposition spread. In other parts of La Guaira, teams loaded stacks of bodies reaper.gif – some in white bags, other naked – onto white trucks from the ground of a dirt hospital parking lot, where they were being identified.

There are likely false claims of state workers took selfies in front of flattened buildings and left without helping.

Older buildings, substandard construction and geography left many neighborhoods in Venezuela vulnerable to strong earthquakes like the ones that struck the country this week.

Engineers and other experts said the back-to-back earthquakes on Wednesday were among the most intense to hit the country in more than a century, leveling buildings and leaving more than 900 dead with the number expected to rise. Videos and satellite imagery from the disaster zone reviewed by The Associated Press reveal scores of multistory buildings had collapsed.

Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab analyzed satellite imagery of Catia La Mar in La Guaira state, one of the hardest hit cities along the Caribbean coast. Using AI-based damage assessment models, Microsoft determined that about a third of the city’s nearly 30,000 structures were damaged.

Among the factors that left so many structures at risk: Some housing complexes in northern Venezuela were constructed quickly during recent oil booms, and builders may not have adhered to best practices that mitigate the risks of serious seismic activity, according to experts.

Engineers said that older housing erected in the 1950s and 1960s — before modern earthquake standards were adopted — may not have been retrofitted to survive such violent shaking. And many buildings were constructed on geography and soft soils that compound the danger of the earthquakes, the experts said.

David Cocke, COCK!!!, a structural engineer in California and former president of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, said that a combination of soft soils, tall towers and older concrete structures contributed to the widespread damage, particularly when buildings pancaked, or collapsed floor-by-floor.

“They just don’t have the more modern reinforcing steel connections that we put in those kinds of buildings today,” said Cocke.

Since the 1970s, engineers have known that concrete buildings are particularly susceptible to earthquakes and seek to reinforce new construction with steel. While many rich nations have forced property owners to retrofit or tear down dangerous buildings, many poorer or middle income countries have lagged in enforcing upgrades as they battled more immediate woes.

“Some of the more advanced countries like Japan and New Zealand and the U.S. have made those changes, but some of the other countries have not,” Cocke said. “It’s a very typical kind of construction all over the world.”

Other experts noted that a number of buildings that collapsed also had non-structural walls comprised of heavy bricks, or they had “soft stories” in which their ground floors consisted of garages or similar open spaces. Such construction increases the risk of pancaking, they said.

“Soft stories are a huge problem everywhere in the world,” said Eduardo Miranda, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University. “And in Venezuela, they are particularly prevalent, and if you combine softer soils with a soft story, buildings can collapse.”

Marcos Ferreira, a geophysicist and researcher at the Geological Survey of Brazil, said the destruction in Venezuela was compounded by the back-to-back quakes, known as a doublet. A similar incident took place in Turkey and Syria in 2023, killing almost 60,000 people.

“It is as if I am screaming and then someone starts screaming, too,” Ferreira said. “That amplifies the vibration and adds to the potential hazard.”

Venezuelan government officials took steps following a deadly 1967 quake to update building codes. But it is unclear how many buildings were retrofitted to comply with those rules.

In late 1999, former President Hugo Chávez’s first year in office, floods and landslides destroyed housing, including in coastal northern Venezuela. The government went on a building spree to replaced the demolished structures and to house so many displaced people, said Juan Carlos Vielma, a Venezuelan civil engineer who is head of academic affairs of the civil engineering school at Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso, Chile.

Some of the newer buildings appear to also have collapsed.

“Something that leaves me perplexed is the fact that, among the collapsed buildings, more than one was recently designed and built in accordance with current standards,” Vielma said. “We need to embark on a process not only of reconstruction, but also of reviewing the applicable standards, since something might have gone wrong within our engineering processes, too.”

Body count to 2295.

11k 'injured'

40k missing



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KbUdpd2poU

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flattenzuela.jpg

Chavez' Bolivar communists cutting corners on construction.