A Venezuelan in Aveiro spent the night trying to call Caracas, amid missed calls, names to be confirmed and the fear that the phone doesn’t fit – “it’s a lot of uncertainty, it’s horrible”. A descendant of Portuguese, ten kilometers from the Venezuelan capital, felt his house shake, held on to the door frame and saw the street fill with people “scared and laughing at the same time”. Susan Marques and Daniel Baptista experienced the same earthquake from opposite places: she because of the messages that didn’t arrive, because of the relatives that had to be located and because of Venezuela that was getting injured again; him through the dark house, waiting to find out what had happened and fearing the consequences. The balance remains provisional, but the two earthquakes, of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5, left more than a hundred dead, hundreds injured and an entire country waiting for news, help and what may still come
At eleven at night in Portugal, Susan Marques could no longer sleep.
In Caracas, on the other side of the phone, it was still night and the distance had already begun to be measured in missed calls, WhatsApp groups, crossed messages, names that appeared and names that remained silent. The Venezuelan, 49, living in Aveiro, tried to reach her cousins, her cousins’ children, neighbors in the area where she lived and people at the travel agency she runs in Venezuela. He went from contact to contact, as if his insistence could shorten the Atlantic.
“It was a terrible night, because we communicated with some, we couldn’t communicate with others, and there were people who called me so I could try to bridge the gap with others. It’s a lot of uncertainty. It’s horrible.”
A cousin was missing. Then it appeared.
His family was fine too. Only then was Susan able to say the phrase that people look for first, even when everything else remains unresolved: “On my level, everything was fine.”
About ten kilometers from Caracas, Daniel Baptista didn’t need anyone to tell him that this earthquake was different.
He felt it before he knew the magnitude, before the images, before the swing, before he could call anyone. He lives in a three-story house, outside the center of the Venezuelan capital, and when the ground started to move, he looked for what was most fixed. “It started shaking really hard. I hadn’t felt shaking like that since I was little. It started to get bigger and bigger. When the person thought it wasn’t going to stop, I grabbed the frame of the front door. I thought the house was going to fall on top of me.”
Then came darkness. “The light went out, the electricity went out, everything went out. We were left without internet. I didn’t know what had happened.”
This is how the same night split into two geographies. In Caracas, the body clung to a house that was no longer quiet. In Portugal, the cell phone is attached to the hand.
Daniel, of Venezuelan descent, 50 years old, knows the small earthquakes of a lifetime in a seismic country. Susan too. Neither of them speak of them as surprises. They talk about it as something else, a difference perceived before it is measured. Susan remembers the previous tremors as almost manageable episodes. “I’ve been through several. But they were earthquakes in which a person was in the office, remained calm, waited a few seconds, went out into the street, waited some more, there was one aftershock or another, and there was no problem. But like this, no.”
Daniel went to get his mother’s souvenir. He had arrived from Portugal to Venezuela when he experienced the 1967 Caracas earthquake, a memory that remained in the history of the family and the city. Now the comparison is back. “The one in 1967 was experienced by my mother. They had come from Portugal to Venezuela. They had been here for a year, or less than a year, and the earthquake hit them. It was horrible. But this one was worse, because there were two at the same time.”
The known data, however, help to understand this perception. Venezuela was hit by two very strong earthquakes in sequence, first one of magnitude 7.2 and then another of magnitude 7.5, separated by less than a minute.
The country woke up to fallen buildings, searches through rubble, injuries, deaths, aftershocks and a still provisional count. In the first hours, however, the catastrophe still did not fit into numbers. It fit into short messages, dropped phone calls, single images, people repeating the same word.
Susan received everything in pieces. “From Caracas, I can’t get local television to watch the news. It’s all through social media, WhatsApp channels and so on.” What came to him from those who had lived through the night was always similar. “Everyone said the same thing: that it was horrible. That was the word: horrible. And they cried.” In the area where Susan lived, Los Palos Grandes, a neighborhood in the east of Caracas, in the municipality of Chacao, reports reached her of four collapsed buildings. It was necessary to confirm buildings, streets, relatives, acquaintances, neighbors, workers, the office.
Susan has worked in travel for 30 years, and suddenly her work was also caught up in the earthquake: Simón Bolívar International Airport in Maiquetía, Caracas’ main air gateway, was down, and what for many was a distant tragedy also became a passenger list, flights in transit, airlines unresponsive, and vacations starting on the wrong weekend. “Now we have to try to understand how the building is, how the store is, how everything is. It’s taking the computers, the notebooks, home, seeing the flights, understanding how we are going to reschedule everything, because we don’t have an airport, right? Everything is collapsed. We are waiting for information from the airlines.”
Practical life entered through the tragedy within. There were canceled flights, passengers to be transferred, families who were already on vacation or on their way to vacation, alternatives still uncertain in Valencia, Maracaibo, Curaçao or Las Piedras. Susan heard names of airports and chances of a solution, but nothing was safe, because landing a plane isn’t just about finding a runway. It’s about knowing if you have staff, if you have a schedule, if you have the conditions, if you have a country to receive those who arrive. “It’s all logistics that we still know absolutely nothing about. I know that the flights are all cancelled, that’s for sure.”
Daniel, in turn, decided not to leave the house yet, not “soon”. It wasn’t abstract fear or a lack of desire to understand what was happening around. It was more of a form of prudence. After an earthquake, even the street can no longer be a path. He rides a motorbike, knows the region, but realized that one thing out of place was enough to turn his curiosity into a risk. “I didn’t leave here because there are many high voltage poles and cables could fall on a person. In other words, it is not recommended to leave until someone checks this.”
When communications improved a little, Daniel called his brother in Sabana Grande, a central area of Caracas. From the other side came another image of the night: people sleeping in the square because the old buildings, built in the 50s, no longer offered the minimum confidence that a building should offer after the earth moves. “He told me that it was horrible, that everyone had to sleep in the square, because the buildings didn’t offer security. They are very old buildings. And, well, it’s scary.”
There is a particular form of fear when the house is no longer a shelter and the street is not yet safe. Daniel recognized it in others, but he also recognized a way of reacting that might only seem strange from the outside. “People are on the street, talking, laughing, scared, but talking about what happened, scared and laughing at the same time. In other words, it’s not chaos.”
It’s not indifference. It’s more defense. The way to remain intact in a country accustomed to normality always having something emergency. Daniel does not romanticize her. Put it in the field of survival. “I think it’s a psychological defense mechanism. With as many problems as people have, if one person just suffers, it’s worse.”
The Venezuela that shook this night was already injured. Susan looks at the country as if seeing hope interrupted. Daniel measures it in years of wear. “Venezuela has suffered 25 years of consecutive destruction. It’s been difficult. And now, for this to happen to us, that’s what was needed.”
When he looks at the coming days, Daniel begins by admitting what the country lacks and ends with what the people still have left. Responsiveness alone is not enough. International aid was beginning to be announced, with rescue teams, regional countries and support on the way, but the first resource that comes to mind is closer. “The people here are very good people. Everyone helps each other. That’s what Venezuela has. Everyone will help: the neighbor, the friend, people that the person doesn’t even know will help, because that’s how it is. Here we are used to doing that.”
Susan asks the same, but from the other bank. It does not speak of hospitals, clinics, airports and streets as isolated parts of a disaster. He talks about a country with little room for another test. “I hope for help. I hope for help, especially from outside countries: from the United States, from Europe. Unfortunately, Venezuela does not have support for what is happening. There are no hospitals with medical supplies, the clinics are also unable to respond to what is happening. Help. Help: that is what I ask for.”
The night was already long in Portugal when Susan realized that the closest family had been contacted. There were eight people, including cousins, children of cousins and several families. Still, the relief does not erase the vigil. In the distance, a tragedy continues to happen even when our people are alive. It remains in the office to be evaluated, in canceled flights, in groups of neighbors, in images that arrive late and in a country once again suspended.
“I have no words to describe it,” admits Susan. “Now we had a light at the end of the tunnel, a hope, and now we’re back to this again. I really don’t know. I don’t have words. We have to have faith, but… wow: it’s very strong.”
Daniel also ends up in the place where fear intersects with a kind of reckoning. The replicas continue to worry. There are buildings that may not withstand another strong shock. There are nights when a person realizes that life could end there, in one more second, and from then on they no longer just talk about the earthquake, but about the way to live after it. “You always have to try to look for the positive side of things. Because you never know. Yesterday, for example, something could have fallen on my head and killed me. So, we have to live life as we have been living it.”
In Aveiro, Susan even apologized for the “portunhol”, laughing at her own nerves. In Caracas, Daniel spoke in accelerated Spanish, promising to be attentive if he needed to call again. The conversation ended like this, on both sides of the Atlantic: with people looking for news, waiting for help and still not knowing what could come next.
