I had heard the news about the earthquakes in Venezuela earlier today, but I’d only seen the text headlines and hadn’t looked closely at the reports. That was until I scrolled through Instagram and saw the devastating footage: collapsed buildings, people filming the destruction, and a voice off-camera screaming for his mother toward the rubble.
In another video, a young man sat atop his home, which had been reduced to a pile of ruins. The video was shot in HDR and incredibly high-definition—a crispness that formed a jarring, almost surreal contrast with the devastated background behind him. Even though I didn’t understand the language they were speaking (presumably Spanish), you only needed to look at the screen to understand exactly what had happened.
Major news outlets like AP, Reuters, and the BBC have since released footage from all different angles. The sheer shock of watching these videos hits so much harder than reading text. It’s almost impossible to comprehend how an entire city can be completely disfigured in just a matter of seconds.
Even though some people are being pulled from the rubble right now, I know that an unfathomable number of lives will be impacted by this. It’s not just the people who are trapped; it’s also those who were already sick, and those who will inevitably suffer from the secondary disasters that follow. I’ve read that Venezuela has already been going through an incredibly difficult time lately, grappling with frequent power and water outages. Now, being struck by a 7.2 magnitude earthquake followed just seconds later by a 7.5… the reality on the ground must be unimaginably grim.
The last time I remember being this profoundly shaken by the news was during the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008. I was only in middle school then. Even though Wenchuan and my hometown of Tianmen in Hubei are so far apart, I still remember feeling the tremors all the way over there.
Tonight, my deepest sympathies and thoughts are with the people of Venezuela as they navigate this unimaginable tragedy.