Venezuela Was Not Simply Struck By An Earthquake. It Was Exposed -By Fransiscus Nanga Roka

As the two powerful quakes, a 7.2 out near San Felipe, followed just 39 seconds later by an even bigger 7.5 coming very close to Morón, tore through this nation, the attention turned to the unusualness of such a “doublet earthquake.” But the true tale is far less geological and far more political: this wasn’t merely an act of God. An artificially induced disaster, if you will, awaiting its trigger.

The science is straightforward. Venezuela lies within the slow, but unstoppable, grinding plate boundary between the Caribbean Plate and South American Plate that slowly moves each year (more or less 2 centimeters)y. This is not the catastrophic violence of the Pacific Ring of Fire and it is subtler, quieter and therefore more deadly. Slow tectonics breed complacency. Complacency breeds collapse. And collapse is precisely what would ensue.

One had collapsed a 22-story tower in Caracas. Whole neighbourhoods of La Guaira now a disaster zone were flattened. Forces from the state police are said to have destroyed critical infrastructure, including Simón Bolívar International Airport. Roads cracked, supply chains halted, and thousands tens of thousands perhaps—are missing thought to be buried beneath the earth. However earthquakes do not kill people. Systems do.

The quake was a doublet and this only honed the savagery. What broke structures in the wake of the first shock finished them off in reaction to the second. This is no freak event , it is a known geological threat. Modern engineering anticipates sequential shocks. Resilient legal systems enforce codes for building in this manner. Functional states plan for this very upset of cascading failure. Venezuela did not.

That failure is not accidental. It is structural. It is legal. It is political. Venezuela has long been an such a state, essentially operating as a hollowed-out regulatory state where laws exist more as symbols of governance than escrupulously-observed safeguards. The application of building codes, when they exist at all, is spotty. Oversight mechanisms are compromised. Shortcuts, getting around the rules, and informal construction have flourished as an incentive in economic crisis. In such a climate, infrastructure is not designed to endure disaster, it is designed to survive inspection. Until reality intervenes.

The result is what we have now: a disaster that defies explanation based on the magnitude alone. There have been other countries where stronger tremors resulted in less human casualties. It’s not below ground, but above it in governance, accountability and the rule of law.

International response is already on its way. European, American, Chinese and other Latin American rescue teams are racing with time to pull mani from concrete graves. Humanitarian aid will flow. Statements of solidarity will multiply.

Yet none of this deals with the actual, uncomfortable reality: international aid is after domestic failure.

What Venezuela shuts your eyes so pure and plain is that disaster risk is not only environmental. It is constitutional. This is about whether a state honors even the most minimal duty it has: to protect life. Disasters become designed mass casualty events, not a matter of unfortunate happenstance when that obligation starts to look like just an option.

Its rare seismic mechanics will be studied, which includes the “doublet earthquake” that occurs there. As such it should be studied as a compounded failure: nature amplified by institutional weakness. Not tectonic, because the most incendiary fault line in Venezuela is not soil. It is political.

Fransiscus Nanga Roka

Faculty of Law University 17 August Surabaya, Managing Partner of Law Firm Victorious Indonesia and Stuctural Engineering Expertize