Why did they pancake? Building failures, soft soil amplify Venezuela quake destruction

When late Venezuelan ⁠leader Hugo Chavez built this coastal housing development bearing his name as part of his socialist revolution, residents found ⁠a fresh start after deadly floods had decimated the area more than a decade earlier.

But after two back-to-back earthquakes flattened parts of the 1,100-unit complex last Wednesday, engineers have urged the Venezuelan government to swiftly audit similar public housing that is still standing.

“I lost my whole apartment,” said Yelsa Rojas, who since 2015 has lived on the second floor of the building colloquially known as ‘Los Cocos’, for its proximity to a beach of the same name.

“We think everyone on the second floor is dead,” she said. The only reason she’s alive is because she was at a medical appointment when the quakes hit, she added.

While engineers and construction specialists said it was too soon to declare exactly why individual buildings collapsed, decades of neglect, a lack ‌of enforcement of building codes and shoddy licensing practices under Chavez and his successor, Nicolas Maduro, likely exacerbated the disaster’s human cost.

They also pointed to soil instability in the worst-hit state of La Guaira, where Los Cocos is located, making it an especially risky location to build.