An eight-story apartment building collapsed in Caraballeda in La Guaira after two powerful earthquakes struck the region, burying Venezuelan merchant Grian Serrano, his 8-year-old son and his 69-year-old mother beneath rubble and twisted steel. The 46-year-old was bruised around his left eye and across much of his body as he recovered Wednesday, one more low-income resident left to absorb the violence of a place built and rebuilt under conditions he did not control.
Who Gets Crushed
Serrano said, “It is a miracle from God,” as he described clawing through debris with his bare hands in total darkness before rescuing his son and mother with the help of two passersby. That rescue came after the building gave way in the state hardest hit by the magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 earthquakes. The government said the quakes killed more than 1,700 people and injured more than 5,000. Hundreds of buildings collapsed or were damaged, primarily in La Guaira, with significant damage also reported in Caracas and the states of Carabobo, Miranda, Aragua and Yaracuy.
La Guaira, known as Vargas until 2019, is Venezuela’s second-smallest state but one of its most strategically important. About 30 kilometers north of Caracas, it holds 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. The people who keep the place running live closest to the danger.
What the Ground Gives, What the System Takes
Speaking from his brother’s home in Caracas, Serrano said last week’s terror dragged his mind back to Dec. 15, 1999, when he was jolted awake by screams from the household employee who had 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. The scene was not just disaster. It was abandonment in motion.
Driven by instinct, Serrano fled his fourth-floor apartment with his mother, sister and nanny, climbing to the roof. From there, they watched floodwaters engulf the building’s lower floors as massive trees slammed into its columns, fearing it would collapse like others nearby. Their fears eased at dawn as the rain stopped and the floodwaters began to recede. 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. No rescue arrived in time. The people moved themselves.
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 Ángel Rangel, who led rescue operations as director of Venezuela’s Civil Protection agency. Twenty-seven years later, the same state is still counting bodies, damage and displacement while the buildings keep failing around the people inside them.
Built on Risk, Ruled by Standards
Rangel, a disaster specialist, 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,” Rangel said, adding that building in such areas requires “strict adherence to seismic-resistant engineering standards” adopted after the powerful 1967 earthquake that struck Caracas. Many of the buildings that collapsed in La Guaira were built in the 1970s, and it remains unclear whether they met those standards.
That uncertainty hangs over the wreckage. The rules exist. The buildings fell anyway. The people below paid the price.
Still shaken by the devastation left by the earthquakes, Serrano said 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. After losing his home and all his belongings, he said he does not know what comes next. But one thing is certain: He will never live in La Guaira again. “That’s twice now,” he said. “Sometimes I think if there’s a third time, it’s going to win the battle.”