Grian Serrano clawed through darkness and rubble with his bare hands last week, pulling his 8-year-old son and 69-year-old mother from the wreckage of their collapsed apartment building in Caraballeda. The 46-year-old Venezuelan merchant survived. More than 1,700 others didn't.
The twin earthquakes that struck La Guaira one week ago killed over 1,700 people and injured more than 5,000, according to the government. Hundreds of buildings collapsed or sustained damage, mainly in La Guaira, with significant destruction also reported in Caracas and in the states of Carabobo, Miranda, Aragua and Yaracuy. Serrano, bruised around his left eye and across much of his body, said two passersby helped him rescue his family from beneath twisted steel and concrete. "It is a miracle from God," he said.
A State Built on Risky Ground
La Guaira, known as Vargas until 2019, is Venezuela's second-smallest state and one of its most strategically important. It sits about 30 kilometers north of Caracas and is home to the country's main international airport and second-largest seaport. Its roughly 440,000 residents are largely low-income and depend on tourism, commerce and jobs tied to the airport and seaport.
Ángel Rangel, a disaster specialist who led rescue operations as director of Venezuela's Civil Protection agency during the 1999 Vargas Tragedy, said the buildings that collapsed in La Guaira were built on terrain formed over centuries by sediment carried down from the surrounding mountains. "That type of terrain is particularly risky for construction," he said, adding that building in such areas requires "strict adherence to seismic-resistant engineering standards" adopted after the powerful earthquake that struck Caracas 59 years ago. Many of the buildings that collapsed in La Guaira were built in the 1970s, and it remains unclear whether they met those standards.
Twice Devastated, Nowhere to Go
Serrano said he's speaking from his brother's home in Caracas after losing his home and all his belongings. He doesn't know what comes next, but he won't return to La Guaira. "That's twice now," he said. "Sometimes I think if there's a third time, it's going to win the battle."
The terror from last week's earthquakes brought back memories of Dec. 15, 1999, when he was jolted awake by the screams of a household employee who'd seen a nearby river overflow after days of heavy rain. From his window, he watched the swollen river sweep away trees, massive boulders and vehicles with people trapped inside, banging on the windows and pleading for help. Driven by instinct, he fled his fourth-floor apartment with his mother, sister and nanny, climbed to the roof and watched floodwaters engulf the building's lower floors as massive trees slammed into its columns. After waiting in vain for rescue, the family made its way through mud, rocks, debris and fallen trees to his grandparents' home in a nearby neighborhood.
The 1999 floods and landslides, known as the "Vargas Tragedy," killed 782 people. Another 2,000 were reported missing and about 250,000 residents were affected, according to Rangel. Serrano said he believes La Guaira, bordered by the Caribbean Sea and the Ávila mountain range, is under a curse. "It isn't normal for such horrible things to happen in the same place," he said.
Why This Matters:
The concentration of death and destruction in La Guaira raises urgent questions about whether building codes designed to protect vulnerable communities were enforced in one of Venezuela's poorest regions. With roughly 440,000 largely low-income residents living on geologically unstable terrain, the state has now suffered two catastrophic disasters in less than three decades. Rangel's acknowledgment that many collapsed buildings were constructed in the 1970s—after seismic standards were adopted—suggests a potential failure of regulatory oversight that disproportionately endangered working families dependent on port and airport jobs. Serrano's displacement, along with thousands of others who've lost homes and livelihoods, underscores how disaster risk falls heaviest on communities with the fewest resources to rebuild. Whether survivors receive adequate support and whether future construction will be held to rigorous safety standards will determine if La Guaira's pattern of preventable tragedy continues.