Scientists say the Venezuelan earthquake sequence may have included two separate faultsExBulletin

People and rescue workers work on the rubble of a collapsed building in Caracas after two powerful earthquakes hit Venezuela. Edilzon Gamez / Getty Images .

. Edilzon Gamez/Getty Images

It is possible that one of the major earthquakes that struck Caracas – where ancient buildings are vulnerable to strong shaking – caused widespread damage. A pair of them were less than a minute apart, says William Barnhart, a geophysicist at the USGS in Golden, Colorado.

“A 7.2-magnitude earthquake in this area alone would be devastating,” Barnhart says. “But it was followed 39 seconds later by a 7.5-magnitude earthquake, almost three times stronger.”

The fact that it struck land, close to major population centers, made it particularly deadly, Barnhart says. “It’s just a terrible tragedy,” he says.

Barnhart says it’s too early to say exactly what happened underground, but it appears that these two earthquakes may have been caused by two separate faults. Many faults crisscross this tectonically complex region.

“There’s not one easily identifiable fault that you can point to and say, ‘The earthquake definitely happened on this fault,'” Barnhart says.

Historically, when experts assess earthquake risk, they haven’t necessarily taken into account this multi-fault scenario, says Chris Goldfinger, a paleontologist at Oregon State University. “We always tend to assume that earthquakes will occur on one fault and only one fault,” he says.

In 2016, a multi-fault event — the Kaikoura earthquake in New Zealand — took people by surprise, Goldfinger says, and changed scientists’ understanding of how interconnected faults cause multiple ruptures. Assuming the Venezuelan earthquakes were similar, he says, it would be important information for those studying this type of risk.

“The first accident was completely out of the blue. We had no idea this could happen at all,” Goldfinger says. “This is the second earthquake after 10 years, where two major earthquakes occurred on separate faults.”

There are other places around the world that have multiple disadvantages. Parts of the California fault system, including the San Andreas Fault, have similarly complex tectonics.

A recent study found that parts of the San Andreas and San Jacinto fault systems may now be at their highest typical stress levels in at least 1,000 years. Experts say the region in California is more prepared for such an event than Venezuela.

Goldfinger says this level of preparation is rare. In many places, engineering has not kept pace with the rapid development of seismology.

“Many of these buildings around the world were built before plate tectonics,” he says. “But it is very difficult to think about rehabilitating entire cities.”

The Venezuelan earthquakes came in quick succession with two others elsewhere, one in Japan and the other in California. “As we understand it, these earthquakes are all completely unrelated,” says Barnhart, the USGS geophysicist.

He points out that although the earthquakes that struck Venezuela were unusual in many ways, their coincidence with two other unrelated earthquakes on the same day was less clear-cut than it might seem.

“Earthquakes happen all the time,” Barnhart says. “Most people don’t pay attention because most earthquakes happen at sea and no one is affected.”

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