Hugo Chávez housing plan complex collapses after earthquakes in Venezuela

The earthquakes in Venezuela have left one of the large complexes of the housing program promoted by the late president Hugo Chávez in La Guaira, the most affected state, uninhabitable, AFP found. The two tremors that occurred on Wednesday less than a minute apart left nearly 1,500 dead and great desolation in the country, especially in La Guaira, a neighbor of Caracas and considered the ground zero of the tragedy. Jenny Contreras, 28, has been sleeping with her husband and four-year-old son on a mattress in the street since the strong tremors shook the building where they lived. She lived in an apartment that swayed over the lower floors in one of the 192 buildings of the Hugo Chávez Urbanism, in the Catia La Mar neighborhood. She only managed to recover a few belongings before the infrastructure gave way due to the hundreds of aftershocks. The residents of this complex, with 3,400 apartments and four floors, were evacuated and will be taken to a shelter in Caracas. The disaster left hundreds of buildings collapsed and, according to authorities, 189 collapsed completely, especially in Caracas and La Guaira. The buildings show large cracks; many gave way at the bases and are leaning, almost falling. Wooden planks, beams, and yellow polyurethane foam were exposed. - "Anything but a shelter" - Other buildings collapsed due to the intensity of the tremor, but also due to explosions of domestic gas cylinders, some of their residents say. Among the rubble of one of the residences, the swollen hand of a dead person who had not yet been rescued appeared. "Definitely, the entire residential complex will be condemned. The entire complex, in the future, will disappear because they were all in terrible condition," said Contreras. Experts have warned about premature wear, cracks, and structural damage in several buildings built by Chávez's flagship plan: Misión Vivienda (Housing Mission). The College of Engineers of Venezuela (CIV), the regulator of the engineering and architecture profession in the country, has warned in several reports about the vulnerability of the buildings and the lack of information about the quality of soil studies. "The other wings most affected were 1 and 3. Up there. On that side, all of that has already fallen. They sank. And there are many dead," said Dayana Lean, a 51-year-old merchant. She says she does not want to go to a shelter and asks the authorities for "the miracle of relocation to apartments, even if it is in other states." "Wherever it is, anything but a shelter. To be like refugees, we stay here, we take care of ourselves," she said. In front of the ruins of their buildings, they placed mattresses, washing machines, wooden furniture, and a series of household utensils they managed to take out of their homes. Interim President Delcy Rodríguez announced on Sunday the creation of "temporary camps" for those who lost their homes. Housing construction projects will be executed "in a very short time," she reported. "Are we going to a shelter?" asks Sandra Racure, 47, who has lived in this complex for 13 years. She laments that the country still has "refugees" from other natural disasters.