When the ground beneath Venezuela started violently rocking on Wednesday evening, Verónica feared the walls of her Caracas apartment would bury her.
“I thought I was going to die,” she told BBC Mundo.
She was at home celebrating a national holiday with her mother when tremors from two earthquakes hit the city, seconds apart, around 18:00 local time (22:00 GMT): the first at a magnitude of 7.2 and the second at 7.5.
More than 30 people have been confirmed dead so far and hundreds more are injured – but authorities have warned they have not even begun to gauge the losses in some of the hardest hit areas.
Debris is strewn around the streets of Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, as rescuers dig through the wreckage of collapsed buildings to locate survivors. In some footage, people can be heard calling for help.
Across other affected parts of Venezeula, a picture of the damage is still emerging as power and internet outages add to the chaos.
