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The Fallout of Massive Earthquakes for Venezuela — and the U.S.
Where this was said
Karmanayev's Drive Into the Destruction Zone
At 7:01 · chapter starts 6:15
Playing back audio from his own car recording, Karmanayev describes the journey into La Guaira: the procession of supply trucks, motorbikes carrying groceries, and the eerie normalcy of the surrounding landscape until the moment you entered the city itself. Then: walls blown out, lifts collapsed, people's possessions hanging from shattered buildings. The apparent randomness was striking — one block completely unscathed, the next utterly leveled. Standing on a collapsed high-rise, he was struck for the first time in his career by the physical smell of death: the unmistakable odor of decaying flesh rising from the rubble as dozens of volunteers dug around him.
Standing on a collapsed residential building in La Guaira, Anatoly Karmanayev encountered something he had never experienced in years of foreign correspondence: the unmistakable physical smell of mass death — decayed flesh rising from the rubble as rescuers dug below.
Venezuela's official earthquake death toll sits at around 2,000, but the government itself has suggested the number could climb to 10,000. Crowdsourcing platforms list up to 50,000 missing. The final figure, Karmanayev says, is not unlikely to end up in the five digits.
The Venezuelan government's official count stood at around 2,000 dead, but officials themselves suggested the toll could rise to about 10,000, with some crowdsourced estimates of 50,000 missing.
