I read a post by a user referring to the terrible effects of nature in her country and it came to my memory the time when I worked in a state in my country that is a seismic zone. It turns out that this state is located on a geographical fault called the Pilar fault. It’s a fault formed by the Caribbean and South American tectonic plates, the region of Cariaco in the state of Sucre and the region of El Pilar, Guiria and Carúpano are the most seismic zones of the eastern Venezuela.
The highest areas of eastern Venezuela are very populated and correspond to the cities already named that are located on the Pilar fault.
Having said this, I can tell you that in the city of Cariaco during 1997 the greatest seismic emergency was registered, after the emergency in Cumaná in 1929.
In 1997 there was a seismic movement of 7° on the Richter scale that lasted approximately one minute. An entire population succumbed to the seismic movements, trapping many students in schools and citizens who were in their offices during working hours. Many human losses were recorded, in addition to the damage to the electricity network, the water supply and other essential services in the community.
I’m telling this because it was a traumatic event for the population in general. So much so that it’s an obligatory story of all its inhabitants, to the people who visit these cities and the neighboring ones. The inhabitants tell them in detail the events of that day, even in this day and age.
A few years after that event, I had to work as a rural doctor in the hospital of the town of Casanay, each one of these places were located 10 minutes away from each other. In the hospital we had a radio in the emergency room which civil protection used to communicate with us to inform us about accidents on the road and possible transfers to our hospital as a stopover to the nearest town.
Every day they passed on the information of the seismic movements registered in the seismic sensors of their control center. Every day was a day of suffering for not knowing when a stronger movement than the previous one would occur. They usually occurred in towns farther away from where I was… until one fateful day arrived.
One night, at about 12pm, I was awakened by my bed moving. It's kind of like a swell of the bed, it was moving like a cradle but irregularly. I woke up and woke up the lady who was taking care of my son and my home, then took my son to get ready to go out. It stopped thundering as we continued to get ready to leave and it was at this moment the aftershock started.
I remember that I told the lady who was with me that if it shook again we would pack up and go back to our town, located three hours away from there but a place where tremors aren’t a common ocurrrence.
A third strong aftershock did not happen. But in the morning at about 9am, while I was on duty, there was a small aftershock of a few seconds, which made me scared enough and I left the hospital to go home. When I arrived nobody noticed the tremor, so I went back to the hospital. Little by little the aftershocks diminished until they became imperceptible to us but they did in the civil protection records.
At that point I decided that my time there was over, so soon after I handed in my resignation as a doctor and decided to come to my hometown, which is where I currently live.
Seismic movements are also felt here, but they occur with less intensity and very sporadically. Every 3 or 4 years we feel an earth movement that makes us all nervous but then it ends and that's it.
My country is a disaster zone wherever we are. Near the sea where storms cause waves that destroy boats of different sizes, but they don’t happen all the time. Earthquakes also occur from east to west due to the geographical fault of the Andes mountain range.
Due to the inability of governments o plan ahead and in times of torrential rains all the towns become flooded and we are cut off for long hours, until the water level drops and in some cases the water remains stagnant due to the slope of the streets.
Government policies have not been adjusted to provide emergency relief. The representatives come and go and the urban and suburban conditions are always the same.
But it’s the people themselves with their spirit of cooperation, with their level of empathy towards the problems of others and they are the ones who go out in the front line to provide support to all those affected.
It has always been said that Venezuelans are of the same size of the commitment that is presented to them and it’s in times of crisis that this gift that we have been given comes to light.
Thank God that it does not rain as often, nor does the earth tremble as in other countries, nor do floods and fires occur as they do in other places. Being a country so unprotected by the authorities, if these tragedies were to happen often, the people here would be finished. God is good.
Hello my dear friend, how are you?
How terrible what you tell us, Venezuela is certainly a country not as seismic as others in the region, for example Chile, however as you mention, we have several failures, which can be a real tragic story, the best thing you could do was to leave your work there, and return to your home, things happen for a reason, sometimes we can not force the barrier and think that these things happen by chance of life, the State of Sucre is a kind of time bomb, however you say something very true, Venezuela is a country that despite all the bad, is still blessed by God, because with all that has happened, it was to no longer exist on the map.
Unfortunately the future looks really sad and desolate, tragedies like the ones you told us about or the one in Vargas State, can be repeated and in the worst way, because in spite of everything, in those dates when these natural disasters happened, the country had the capacity to respond and give immediate attention, today that is something false, and the losses would be serious, thanks for making such a great article and tell us this so interesting, greetings.