Venezuela and its capital, Caracas, were rocked by two massive earthquake pulses on June 24, 2026, just seconds apart. The shaking from the magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 events caused buildings to collapse in cities across the northern part of the country, killing more than 500 people and trapping many more.

University of Southern California geophysicist Sylvain Barbot explained what’s known about the earthquake pulses so far, what risks are still ahead and why Californians should pay attention.

How many earthquakes hit Venezuela, and why did it see so much damage?

Earthquakes are natural phenomena that typically happen at the boundaries of Earth’s tectonic plates. These plates, which make up the Earth’s crust, are tens of miles thick and carry the oceans and continents. They are slowly moving, but not in a smooth, consistent way.

Venezuela sits along the boundary between two of these plates: The South American plate and the Caribbean plate. As they slide past each other, these plates can stick, building up resistance before eventually having a catastrophic failure that generates an earthquake.

There were two big pulses of seismic activity within 39 seconds of each other on June 24, 2026, both over magnitude 7. They could have been separate events or a single earthquake with two pulses. Scientists don’t yet know because we’re still analyzing the data.

Two separate earthquakes is plausible. In 2023 there was an earthquake “doublet” in Turkey, where two magnitude 7-plus earthquakes happened within eight hours of each other. In that case, it was clearly two events.

In Venezuela the pulses were just a few seconds apart. There........

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