‘Paralysed by fear’: Venezuelans tell of escape and loss after huge earthquakes

The seaside town of Catia La Mar, which was stuck by US missiles in January, was badly affected. Photograph: Federico Parra/AFP/Getty Images View image in fullscreen The seaside town of Catia La Mar, which was stuck by US missiles in January, was badly affected. Photograph: Federico Parra/AFP/Getty Images ‘Paralysed by fear’: Venezuelans tell of escape and loss after huge earthquakes People in Caracas and coastal towns describe powerful quakes that collapsed buildings and killed at least 164 As a double whammy of powerful earthquakes rattled Venezuela’s northern coast on Wednesday, residents of the capital, Caracas, scrambled out on to the streets from shuddering, fractured buildings. “It was horrible. I felt like the house was moving to a different rhythm to the earth. I had to carry my mum out. She was paralysed by fear,” said 18-year-old Sebastian Rodríguez, whose family runs a shop in Centro Plaza, a brutalist commercial centre in the affluent neighbourhood of Los Palos Grandes. The robust reinforced concrete structure of the shopping centre – an architectural gem built at the peak of Venezuela’s 1970s oil boom – appeared to have been spared major damage, but the surrounding area had been far less fortunate. View image in fullscreen A collapsed apartment building in Los Palos Grandes, an affluent neighbourhood of Caracas. Photograph: Jesús Vargas/Getty Images At least three buildings in Los Palos Grandes and neighbouring Altamira collapsed during the 7.2- and 7.5-magnitude quakes that struck within a minute of each other shortly after 6pm local time. As night fell, emergency workers, volunteers and the relatives of victims rushed to the scene hoping to find survivors in the wreckage of residential buildings that had been reduced to a mangle of masonry and steel. “There is so much rubble,” gasped Jessica Galvis​, 33, a critical care physician, who was waiting for news outside one fallen six-floor building where she believed a female friend had been buried. View image in fullscreen The earthquakes stuck within a minute of each other shortly after 6pm. Photograph: Edilzon Gamez/Getty Images José Morillo, 61, said he had raced across town on his motorbike, praying that his trapped family members would all be found alive. “My brother, my son and nephews are all inside,” Morillo said, before a female relative was pulled from the building’s ruins, seemingly still alive. At the foot of the spectacular Ávila mountain, Altamira and Los Palos Grandes are home to some of the city’s wealthiest residents and the location of numerous upmarket hotels, restaurants and foreign missions, including the British, German and Brazilian embassies. Working-class areas such as Catia, whose residents had already been struggling with the effects of one of the worst peacetime economic crises in modern history, were also devastated. View image in fullscreen A collapsed building in the Altamira neighbourhood of Caracas. Photograph: Federico Parra/AFP/Getty Images “My walls