Worst Earthquake in 100 Years Hits Venezuela — USA & Japan Shake Too

Something strange is happening. The worst earthquake in a hundred years just hit Venezuela. But it was not alone, because last week there were also earthquakes in Japan, Russia and California. Big ones too. What is happening? Is something big happening, everyone? Is the world waking up, or what? Well, the real answer you will learn today.

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Okay, if you like real life stories spoken by a British human teacher, you are in the right place for comprehensible input for intermediate English learners.

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Okay, so let's go back to Wednesday evening. It was the 24th of June last week in Venezuela. It was a holiday, so most people were not at work. They were at home with their families. Children were playing. Dinner was cooking, and it was a normal, quiet evening near the ocean.

Then, just after 6 o'clock, the ground began to move.

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The first earthquake was strong. So, we measure how strong an earthquake is with a number called magnitude. This one was magnitude 7.2, which is strong.

So people ran into the streets. Naturally, the walls shook. Then, you know, the lights swung, but then it stopped.

People looked around, chatted with their neighbours a bit. Some people smiled because they thought the worst was over.

But they were wrong.

That first earthquake was just a warning. Scientists call this a foreshock. A foreshock is a smaller earthquake before a bigger one.

The people of Venezuela had 39 seconds. Just 39 seconds.

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Then the second earthquake hit, and this one was magnitude 7.5. So it was even stronger. It was the biggest earthquake in Venezuela for more than 100 years.

So this time, the buildings could not hold on. Across the country, the buildings began to collapse — to fall down, 'collapse'. The earthquake was shallow, and for earthquakes, that means it happened close to the surface of the earth. So the shaking was very, very strong.

And the worst place hit was a coastal area called La Guaira, north of the capital city. Dozens of buildings there fell to the ground. The government called there the disaster zone.

By the next day, more than 230 people had died, thousands more were hurt, and under the broken buildings — under the rubble, the broken stone and concrete — hundreds of people were, and are, still trapped.

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And why did so many buildings fall?

Well, the earthquake was shallow, so it happened close to the top of the ground. But many of the buildings were already quite weak, because the economy in Venezuela hasn't been strong for many years. So the buildings, they're not built to survive this kind of shock.

And the rescue is a race against time, because the ground doesn't stay quiet. After the two big earthquakes, there's lots of smaller ones — the aftershocks. These are many small earthquakes that come after the big one. So the next day, there had been at least 138 aftershocks.

Which is rescuers climbing on top of already broken buildings, with the ground shaking beneath their feet at the same time.

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In the town of Caraballeda, a tall apartment building had come down. But inside, there were three children — brothers and sisters. Full of dust, no light, a huge weight of the building above them.

But they were still alive. So people dug for them, and they could hear the voices of these three kids. And then, you can imagine, the brick — the last brick — being pulled off, and light.

And then one of the children said, "There are three of us." And they pulled out all three of the kids still alive. So rescuers lifted them out one by one.

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But generally, the rescue teams, they don't have enough machines.

Here's another rescue story. In La Guaira, a man named Carlos stood in front of a mountain of broken concrete. And one day before, it had been an apartment building with his neighbours living inside.

But here, there's no big machines, no diggers, nothing. It's just people.

So Carlos and his neighbours, they were just digging with their hands, pulling away heavy stone, not sleeping, tired, and the ground was still shaking with aftershocks.

Aftershocks happened just after the main earthquake, and every aftershock can bring down a bit more buildings.

But Carlos and the neighbours, they did not stop, because they thought under the rubble could still be people there, right?

So this group of volunteers — which is neighbours, students, strangers, not soldiers, the volunteers — they pulled out three people from that building.

And down the street, other neighbours saved a mother and two children.

And some unnamed students in the news who were training to be doctors, they helped a man who was trapped under some heavy wooden beams of a restaurant. And they lifted it off of him piece by piece.

Rescue teams have now flown in from the US, and El Salvador, a small country nearby, sent 300 trained rescuers. Mexico and Chile and other countries have sent doctors, machines and supplies too.

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So that was happening all over Venezuela, but here's the strange thing.

So while you had people digging in Venezuela, on the other side of the world, Japan started to shake.

An earthquake of magnitude 6.9 hit the north of Japan, and that is strong.

And in California, in the USA, they had a 5.6 magnitude earthquake, which people felt in their homes.

So these are three countries in one day, and it did not stop there. How weird is that?

A few days before, there was also a big earthquake in Russia too. And earlier in the month, an even bigger one, magnitude 7.8 near the Philippines.

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Why is this? Is it like that movie, the year 2012?

Is the earth angry? Is it God? Or aliens? Or something?

It's quite a coincidence, is it not?

So some people online thought that the earthquakes were connected. And something big is coming!

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According to science, which is often more amazing than any scary story, the earth shakes all the time.

Every single day, there are thousands of earthquakes all around the world, and most of them are very small, and we don't even feel them.

And sometimes it's just a swinging light, or a few cupboards open and close, and that's it.

Every year, there are almost half a million earthquakes. And about 10 times per month around the world, magnitude six or more earthquakes happen. And seven — magnitude seven — happens about 15 times a year.

Could they be connected, in that, you know, Venezuela shook and it pushed Japan in some way?

Probably not.

These earthquakes were thousands of kilometres apart on different sides of the planet. They sit on completely different fault lines, and are on different tectonic plates.

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So why does it seem so, you know, crazy — and maybe supernatural — that all of these earthquakes happened at the same time? Well, it's how our attention shifts to what's on our mind, right?

The Venezuelan earthquake was crazy big. So in our mind, collectively, it's like 'earthquakes, earthquakes, earthquakes'. So when other smaller earthquakes happen, and they're happening all the time, we notice them, because the big earthquake has been in the news.

One terrible earthquake in Venezuela, in everyone's news feed, and suddenly we notice all the other ones that are there normally anyway.

So the earth did not change, but our attention changed.

So yeah, some people on the internet, they're like, "The earth is waking up."

But in fact, the earth isn't waking up. Rather, it never sleeps.

Right? It's always awake, and it's always moving. And for millions of years, this has been the case. Long before us, and long after us.

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Have you ever been in an earthquake before? If you have, share your story in the comments. Thoughts and prayers with people in Venezuela right now.

When I lived in Cyprus, I was in an earthquake, and it was so weird. It was at 3am in the morning, at the dead of night.

The lights were swinging, the cupboards and drawers were opening and closing.

And then I heard a creaking — like, a sound. I just thought it was the landlord of the house. It was an Airbnb and he lived in the room next to me. I just thought it was maybe a weird apartment. I was half asleep, and a bit lost and disorientated. I was like, "What is happening?"

And then suddenly there's a knock on my door — knock, knock, knock, knock. He's like, "Tristan, hello mate, Tristan, Tristan. Come out, come out." He had a posh English accent, although this was in Cyprus.

Yeah, so I opened the door, and he was like, "Okay everyone" — it was me, him and a Sri Lankan woman — "do not be scared. This is an earthquake."

I remember walking out onto the balcony, and all of the lights across Nicosia were just flashing on and off and on and off.

Yeah, he was a very religious guy. And he was saying, "Do not fear. We are all lambs of God." Something like that.

But I was a bit afraid. And then after about maybe 25 seconds, it stopped.

Yeah, it was quite a surreal and bizarre experience.

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Okay, if you enjoyed today's episode, there's the transcript on the site. Have a beautiful week and see you guys next time.