Qualla: August 2018 Venezuela Earthquake

August 2018 Venezuela Earthquake: Introduction

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Diosdado Cabello was mid-sentence. The president of Venezuela's Constituent National Assembly was delivering a cadena nacional -- a compulsory broadcast that preempts all other programming -- on the evening of August 21, 2018, when the ground began to move. Television cameras captured his reaction: he stopped talking, looked side to side, visibly confused. Six hundred and twenty-two kilometers to the east, just off the coast near Cariaco in Sucre state, the seafloor had ruptured at a depth of 123 kilometers. The magnitude 7.3 earthquake was the largest to strike Venezuela since the 1900 San Narciso earthquake.

August 2018 Venezuela Earthquake: Where Two Plates Grind

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Venezuela's northern coast sits atop the El Pilar fault system, where the Caribbean and South American tectonic plates meet. Usually, these plates experience what geologists call horizontal differential motion -- the Caribbean plate moves eastward, the South American plate moves ...

August 2018 Venezuela Earthquake: Shockwaves Across Borders

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The earthquake's reach was extraordinary. Caracas shook despite being over 600 kilometers from the epicenter, because the city sits on the San Sebastian fault -- part of the same fault system. Bogota, the Colombian capital nearly 2,000 kilometers away, felt tremors. Shaking was r...

August 2018 Venezuela Earthquake: The Tower That Leaned

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In Caracas, the Tower of David -- Venezuela's second-tallest building and the eleventh tallest in South America -- sustained structural damage and began leaning. The unfinished skyscraper, originally intended as a bank headquarters before it was abandoned and occupied by squatter...

August 2018 Venezuela Earthquake: Dark Humor from the Rubble

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Venezuela in August 2018 was already in freefall. Hyperinflation had obliterated the currency -- the government launched a new bolivar on the very day the earthquake struck. Social media responded with the gallows humor of people who had run out of other options. One tweet joked:...