\u201cThis is one of the very damaging earthquakes, because you combined a very large event with residences of a lot of people,\u201d seismologist Lucy Jones, a Caltech research associate, said at a briefing. <\/p>\n
The first images of the most severe damage in Venezuela appear to involve the collapse of \u201cnon-ductile concrete buildings,\u201d a type of construction that also exists in California, according to Maria Mohammed, president of the Structural Engineers Assn. of Southern California. <\/p>\n
\u201cLooking through the photos that have been coming through the news, it looks like most of the buildings that we\u2019re seeing that have collapsed are non-ductile concrete buildings,\u201d Mohammed said. This type of concrete building lacks enough steel to keep the brittle concrete in the columns from exploding when shaken in an earthquake.<\/p>\n
The U.S. Geological Survey has said that non-ductile concrete buildings are one of the building types \u201cmost likely to kill people during an earthquake.\u201d <\/p>\n
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People climb among rubble on Wednesday night in Caracas following two devastating quakes.<\/p>\n
(Jesus Vargas \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
The discovery of the fatal flaw behind non-ductile concrete buildings<\/a> came during the magnitude 6.6 Sylmar earthquake of 1971. Concrete buildings that collapsed in that earthquake included a 46-year-old Veterans Administration hospital in San Fernando, where 49 people died. <\/p>\n More concrete buildings came tumbling down during the magnitude 6.7 Northridge earthquake of 1994, causing the partial collapse<\/a> of a Kaiser Permanente building and a Bullock\u2019s department store. <\/p>\n Minimum building requirements have changed in the U.S. since the 1970s to ban construction of non-ductile concrete buildings and to require a better configuration of steel reinforcement to resist shaking. In the last decade, a few local governments, such as the cities of Los Angeles, Torrance<\/a>, Santa Monica and West Hollywood, have required seismic retrofits of vulnerable non-ductile concrete buildings, although the deadline to get them retrofitted remains years away. L.A. County<\/a> also recently ordered retrofits of high-rise concrete buildings that are either owned by the county or in the unincorporated area.<\/p>\n But many other cities across California have not imposed such retrofit rules, including San Francisco,<\/a> which has so far required only that the owners of concrete buildings submit an online screening form with information about their building\u2019s design. <\/p>\n Meanwhile, vulnerable concrete buildings continue to tumble down in earthquakes all around the world, including in Taiwan<\/a> in 1999, New Zealand<\/a> in 2011, Mexico<\/a> in 2017, Turkey and Syria<\/a> in 2023 and, earlier this month, in the Philippines<\/a>, where a viral video showed workers fleeing a wobbling building containing a Jollibee fast-food restaurant before it collapsed catastrophically. <\/p>\n It will take time to assess the building codes and practices in the Venezuelan cities devastated Wednesday. One study, published in 2020, discussed<\/a> how experts might recommend retrofitting riskier buildings. Another report, published in 2023, suggested that updates<\/a> be incorporated into the Venezuelan seismic code \u201cto improve the safety\u201d of buildings. <\/p>\n Some of the deadliest quake-triggered building collapses in other countries around the world were influenced by corruption<\/a>, uneven enforcement of building rules and shoddy<\/a> construction<\/a>. In New Zealand, a government investigation<\/a> found that one of the engineers who designed one of the buildings that collapsed, which resulted in 115 deaths, had been working well beyond<\/a> his level of experience. <\/p>\n California has progressively increased quake safety codes for new construction in the last century after major temblors such as those in Long Beach in 1933, Sylmar in 1971, Loma Prieta in 1989 and Northridge in 1994.<\/p>\n But there remains concern about older construction. Although many older brick buildings have been retrofitted in L.A., other types of buildings have not.<\/p>\n Rescue workers in Caracas search a collapsed building for survivors after Wednesday\u2019s quakes.<\/p>\n (Javier Campos \/ Associated Press)<\/p>\n Engineers have warned that a major vulnerability for California is concrete buildings built to codes that existed in the 1970s or before and that haven\u2019t been retrofitted and are capable of collapsing. <\/p>\n The USGS said in 2008 that it was plausible that about 50 low- and mid-rise older concrete buildings could collapse in a magnitude 7.8 earthquake in Southern California. There could be 800 people in completely collapsed concrete buildings, and 7,000 in partially collapsed structures, the USGS said in its ShakeOut scenario. <\/p>\n The massive earthquakes that hit Venezuela on Wednesday came as a one-two punch. Temblors of magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5 struck within 39 seconds of each other at 6:05 p.m., according to the U.S. Geological Survey, collapsing buildings in Caracas. An estimated 20,000 people probably experienced \u201cviolent\u201d shaking, as defined by the Modified Mercalli Intensity Scale, enough to throw buildings off foundations and cause great damage in substantial buildings.<\/p>\n The epicenter, or starting point, of the largest quake Wednesday occurred about 100 miles west of Caracas, in the state of Yaracuy, but then the temblor ruptured down a lengthy stretch of fault to the east, sending shaking energy toward the capital. According to crowdsourcing data sent to the USGS, \u201cvery strong\u201d or \u201csevere\u201d shaking was felt in Caracas.<\/p>\n Wednesday\u2019s largest quake appeared to be the biggest Venezuela had experienced in 125 years, possibly eclipsed only by an earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7.7 that hit in 1900 off the country\u2019s coast, killing 21 people, according to a USGS database of historic quakes. The closest quake of magnitude 6 or above to strike close to Caracas in recent memory was a 6.6 quake<\/a> in 1967, which killed 240 people and highlighted the seismic vulnerability of the city. <\/p>\n The interiors of buildings were visible after walls tumbled during the disaster.<\/p>\n (Adrian Naranjo \/ Associated Press)<\/p>\n Computerized calculations<\/a> by the USGS, based on the area shaken and the quake\u2019s intensity, suggest there\u2019s a 40% chance that fatalities could range from 10,000 to 100,000, with a 36% chance that fatalities could range from 1,000 to 10,000. <\/p>\n Some areas in Venezuela may have perceived the two quakes as just one very long shaking event. One seismic station in Venezuela observed what seemed to be \u201ca fairly continuous event\u201d between the two quakes, said Caltech geophysics professor Zhongwen Zhan, the director of the Caltech Seismological Laboratory, at Wednesday\u2019s briefing.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not surprising. A 7.2 earthquake can last half a minute, so the two earthquakes basically get merged together, so we can expect potentially there is a reclassification later \u2014 it might not be a separate foreshock,\u201d Zhan said.<\/p>\n Caracas\u2019 seismic risk is similar to the risk Los Angeles and San Francisco face, as each of the three cities sits near a tectonic plate boundary \u201cand therefore historically have had bigger earthquakes,\u201d Jones said. \u201cTo a geologist, this is not at all surprising.\u201d <\/p>\n The rate at which tectonic plates are moving past one another in Venezuela is similar to how fast seismic strain is accumulating on the San Andreas fault in California, Jones said. <\/p>\n \u201cThis is the sort of earthquake we\u2019ve been talking about when we talk about the San Andreas risk for California,\u201d Jones said. The similarities are striking \u2014 this earthquake was just outside of Caracas, and the San Andreas fault is about 20 miles away from the edges of the city of Los Angeles and \u201cruns right through the Inland Empire.\u201d <\/p>\n California would probably fare better than Venezuela did Wednesday, but a magnitude 7.8 quake in this state would still be devastating. A USGS simulation of a hypothetical magnitude 7.8 earthquake on the San Andreas fault shows a death toll of 1,800 people is plausible, and there could be hundreds of billions of dollars in losses, with huge fires \u2014 perhaps 10 times the size as those that burned through Altadena and Pacific Palisades<\/a> \u2014 sweeping through the region due to a lack of water. <\/p>\n A car was smashed beneath a building that collapsed in the shaking in Caracas.<\/p>\n (Adrian Naranjo \/ Associated Press)<\/p>\n \u201cSo we are very concerned,\u201d Jones said. <\/p>\n California residents can prepare for an earthquake in a number of ways, including property owners assessing whether a retrofit is needed, even if it isn\u2019t required by a city ordinance. Jones noted that the state offers grants through the Earthquake Brace+Bolt program<\/a> to partially cover the cost of retrofitting older single-family homes that can slide off their foundation in an earthquake. <\/p>\n Many apartment buildings have a flimsy first floor, propped up by skinny supports to accommodate carports, garages or storefronts. At least 15 cities across California have required that these \u201csoft-story\u201d buildings be retrofitted<\/a>, but there are many other cities that have not followed suit. There are also a number of cities, especially in the Inland Empire, with older brick construction that can collapse<\/a> in an earthquake, yet the buildings aren\u2019t required to be strengthened or demolished. <\/p>\n Structural engineers have also warned about the potential vulnerability of certain older steel-frame skyscrapers. Torrance, Santa Monica and West Hollywood all require steel-moment-frame buildings to be evaluated and, if necessary, retrofitted, but the city of Los Angeles does not. <\/p>\n People can also take steps to secure their furniture, such as fastening televisions to walls, strapping bookcases to walls, installing quake-safety latches on kitchen cabinets and using quake-resistant or anti-theft picture frame hooks, which can be purchased at a hardware store and can help prevent glass frames from shattering on the floor. Officials recommend storing one gallon of water per day per person for at least three days and, ideally, for two weeks. <\/p>\n \u201cThe other thing I would strongly say is, talk to your neighbor. Do you have a family plan? Do you have a neighborhood plan?\u201d Jones said. \u201cThat\u2019s what gets you through a disaster, and the best earthquake plans would be ones that you do with your neighborhood, with your church, with your school.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The devastation from two massive earthquakes that struck Venezuela on Wednesday offers a stark warning for California and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1049929,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3843],"tags":[557,144217,2737,288502,61185,35330,728,29287,34470,288501,288500,457,70,16,15,288503,111957,8518,7038],"class_list":["post-1049928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-california","tag-caracas","tag-city","tag-close-quake","tag-collapse","tag-earthquake","tag-environment","tag-jones","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-magnitude","tag-non-ductile-concrete-building","tag-people","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-urban-area","tag-usgs","tag-venezuela","tag-wednesday"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116812808202176266","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1049928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1049929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1049928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1049928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1049928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Rescue](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1782421878_851_.jpeg\")
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