LIVE: Apocalypse In Venezuela - Earthquake Causes Disaster - Latest Update

Multiple earthquakes, including a 7.1 and a stronger 7.5 magnitude event, caused immense destruction in Venezuela's densely populated northern regions, particularly Caracas and La Guaira. Initial reports of 100 deaths quickly escalated to fears of thousands dead, with over 30,000 people reported missing. The high concentration of high-rise buildings without adequate seismic preparation was the primary reason for the extensive damage.

tens of thousands of people are still missing following uh the earthquakes, multiple earthquakes that we have had over the last few hours." (00:00:42), "The first one already caused so much chaos. There were initially reported over 100 people dead, but we are now getting updates from the government in Venezuela that they are looking at thousands and thousands because tens of thousands are still missing. About 30,000, over 30,000 are still missing." (00:02:57), "The main reason uh we've seen so much damage is primarily because this is literally the most populated and concentrated part of the country with a lot of high-rising buildings and they don't have the level of preparations that for example the Japanese government had been working on for the past a few decades."

While Venezuela suffered catastrophic damage from 7.1 and 7.5 magnitude earthquakes, Japan experienced a 7.2 magnitude earthquake around the same time with virtually no damage. This stark difference is attributed to Japan's decades-long investment in earthquake-resistant infrastructure and preparedness measures, a stark contrast to Venezuela's situation where successive governments neglected such investments.

we have had basically no damage in Japan because of the preparations that they have even though it was a 6.9 magnitude in Japan." (00:01:07), "they don't have the level of preparations that for example the Japanese government had been working on for the past a few decades." (00:02:05), "thanks to the brilliant work that the Japanese state have been making for the past few decades, based on the Japanese culture, they were able to mitigate this. They were able to prevent huge damages." (00:11:06), "in Japan we've had 7.2 magnitude... not much damage."

The initial rescue efforts in Venezuela were carried out by locals due to significant obstacles preventing emergency crews from reaching affected areas promptly. The nature of the collapsed buildings in densely concentrated areas makes the rescue operation complex and prolonged, with many feared dead due to the severity of the collapses.

The rescue mission of course started initially by the locals because before the actual emergency crew managed to arrive. The reason for that was because just outside Valencia and outside the the capital Caracas there there there were so much obstacles on the way that it did take a few minutes of course for everybody else to actually arrive." (00:05:09), "they have to find tens of thousands who are trapped but obviously we are expecting a lot of them unfortunately to be dead find them first then try to rescue because that's not going to be an easy operation because of the buildings and because of the way they have collapsed in a very concentrated area"