Fears of thousands of dead and trapped under the debris are growing by the hour, after , which flattened the country’s northern coast and turned the capital, Caracas, into a devastated zone.
In this nightmarish setting, the Greek lawyer Dina Antoniadis, a resident of Chakao, which also turned into a vast zone of destruction with collapsed apartment buildings and damaged infrastructure, shocks by describing the dramatic moments she lived when the earth began to disappear beneath her feet.
“I’m in another area because the building where I live has big cracks and we can’t stay inside at night. I have left for security reasons. There was panic. Apartment buildings collapsed around us. We had no electricity, no way to communicate. Now the situation is slowly being restored and that’s why I can talk to you.
Everything fell to us. Televisions broke, boxes fell, walls opened. It was as if there had been a bombing. We were very scared. The pipes were broken, water was running everywhere. We went down the street and the security and municipal people were instructing us to move away from the buildings. I’m still shaking. A while ago we had another aftershock. We are constantly moving.
After five hours I was able to leave. Now I am hosted by relatives, Greeks. Everyone we have contacted from the Greek community is fine. We have not yet understood the scale of the disaster. It was a day when people were watching the World Cup and most of them were at their homes or at friends’ homes. I’m afraid the numbers will be terrible.
They told us not to stay in our homes. Anyone who can stay with relatives or friends should do so until the checks on the buildings are completed and it is determined which ones are safe,” he said.
