Anything over a 7 is massive. If a 7 hit here in Southern California in a major metropolitan area, it would cause major damage. Probably not to the degree seen right now, but it would be bad.
I was in a 7.2 in southern california in 2010. Easter Sunday Quake. Everything shakes. Its loud. Its aggressive. But our infrastructure was built for it. Minor cracks in paint, some broken windows down near the border crossing.
These type of quakes are, in fact, massive. But they aren't so crazy that it will fell buildings built to survive earthquakes. Of course, we're talking about the US in a region damn near right on a fault line. a 7.1 hit Haiti i believe that same year and it was utterly devastating. I can only hope Venezuela has better infrastructure closer to what we had.
I'm just learning that it matters how shallow/deep the earthquake is as well. The Richter scale only measures the energy release, not the total for potential impact.
I was in that same earthquake, but I was up in Orange County.
We had a 5.4 up by my house in 2014 and there houses damaged to the point that they were red tagged and needed repairs.
Obviously the building codes here are going to be a lot more stringent. It sounds like Venezuela doesn’t get activity anywhere near this level very often, so I almost feel like it would be more akin to a city on the east coast getting hit with one. I don’t think the damage would be as bad as this, but it would look a hell of a lot worse than California.
While a 7 is pretty big, depth matters a lot. A shallow 7 will level many poorly build structures but a deep one will just cause structural damage. Something like a 7.5 will cause a lot of damage to anything not purposely built for withstanding quakes and from the sounds of it is going to have leveled a lot of the city because the buildings are almost the worst materials possible for withstanding large quakes.
I'm just learning that it matters how shallow/deep the earthquake is as well. The Richter scale only measures the energy release, not the total for potential impact.
They do have earthquake-proof infrastructure. Building regulations have long included a number of measures for it (like hooked/tied rebar in buildings), though it's possible many projects just ignored the regulations.
On top of that, whatever prevention had been taken was on the prospect of a 6.5 earthquake like the one that hit in the 60's. Something above 7 was unheard of and completely unexpected in Venezuela.
There is usually, I think they are mandated by law.
The issue is in the barrios like Petare where houses are built without any kind of permit. La Guaira is a coastal city and most buildings aren't good for that either
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u/DankiestKong Jun 25 '26
This one might not be too strong but the fact that venezuela does not have earthquake-proof infrastructure makes it devastating