The Fallout of Massive Earthquakes for Venezuela — and the U.S.

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**Natalie Kitroeff** (0:37)
From The New York Times, I'm Natalie Kitroeff. This is The Daily.

**Natasha Villa** (0:45)
Hello, Carlos.

**Carlos Prieto** (0:47)
Hello, it's nice to meet you. How are you?

**Natasha Villa** (0:50)
Well, I'm completely and totally exhausted.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (0:55)
Last week, after two massive earthquakes struck Venezuela, my colleague, Carlos Prieto, started calling people there.

**Carlos Prieto** (1:02)
Okay, perfect.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (1:05)
Carlos is from Venezuela. He spent his childhood in the capital, Caracas.
But when he started to see pictures and videos of the damage, he realized he couldn't even recognize parts of his hometown. So he asked people how it all started.

**Natasha Villa** (1:19)
I was actually at my best friend's house and I was going back to my house.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (1:25)
So Natasha Villa was driving when the ground started to move.

**Natasha Villa** (1:29)
I started feeling my car just sliding from side to side.
I thought that it was the feeling of when you're driving on top of water, so you feel like the car is just sliding. You could see people screaming and running out of the street. You could see the light post and the electrical post falling down in the street and the people screaming while the electricity sparkles were just going everywhere.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (1:59)
She had no idea how extensive the damage was.

**Natasha Villa** (2:02)
I didn't have signal in my phone at all because the network had fallen completely.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (2:08)
With power outages all over the country and phone lines collapsed, there was no way to communicate with my friends. Much of Venezuela didn't know either.

**Carlos Yolambi** (2:17)
We had no idea what was happening. So I waited for a friend who had a car and we drove around the city trying to find a signal.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (2:26)
Carlos Yolambi is a comedian. He was supposed to perform at a stand-up show that night.

**Carlos Yolambi** (2:32)
So yeah, once we found the signal.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (2:36)
When he finally got access to the internet, he couldn't believe what was coming up on his phone.

**Carlos Prieto** (2:41)
What was the first thing that you saw?

**Carlos Yolambi** (2:42)
The first thing I saw was like some buildings collapsed. And we have some friends who live next to the first building that fell off in Caracas. Like, hey, our friend is alive. But probably a lot of people in the building next to him are not.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (3:00)
And then he saw more.

**Carlos Yolambi** (3:02)
Then as we checked the news, we saw, oh, OK, so that was not the only building that fell.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (3:08)
He saw building after building collapsed in Caracas. But nothing prepared him for what had happened in La Guaida, a state on the country's northern coast.

**Carlos Yolambi** (3:17)
And then we saw La Guaida, and it was too much.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (3:33)
As more and more images trickled out, a horrific picture of ruin began to emerge. La Guaida is normally a popular vacation spot. But now, entire blocks had turned to rubble.
Thousands and thousands of people were looking for their loved ones.

**Carlos Yolambi** (3:52)
The first thing I thought was, the city is lost.

**Natasha Villa** (3:56)
The City is Lost Just today, I went over to the Domingo Luciani Hospital, where I saw, with my own eyes, the level of devastation. I saw trucks, pick up trucks, carrying patients directly from La Huayra. There was a four-year-old girl that had her pelvis exposed. I was arriving at the same time and I was there.
There's no way to describe it.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (4:40)
Today, we look at how Venezuelans united after the earthquakes and talk to our colleague, Anatoly Kurmanaev, from La Huayra about how the aftermath of the tragedy has forced the Trump administration to shift its plans in Venezuela. It's Thursday, July 2nd.
So Anatoly, you got to Venezuela on Sunday, and you've been spending a lot of time in the part of the country most affected by these earthquakes, which is La Guaira. So just tell me what you've seen.