OMM Newsroom
The day after twin earthquakes struck Venezuela, Ailin Quiroz went to the coast to look for her sister. She found the site of her sister’s apartment tower reduced to rubble.
Quiroz searched the ruins for hours but found no trace of her sister or six other relatives who lived in the 13-storey building. She has been left asking why it collapsed while nearby high-rises remained standing, according to “CNN”.
The tower was one of 15 public housing buildings in the coastal town of Caraballeda that collapsed in earthquakes measuring 7.2 and 7.5 on June 24. The government has not released a comprehensive list of those killed, but thousands of public housing residents are believed likely to have died. Each tower, all more than eight storeys tall, contained at least 240 apartments.
An analysis of images and video from construction and after the collapses found apparent construction flaws that may have contributed to the scale of the disaster. Visual evidence appears to show improperly assembled reinforcing steel bars, or “stirrups”, in buildings at five government-built complexes. Images from three complexes also show deep rust on metal supports, which experts said could indicate poor-quality concrete. It is not known whether these defects were present in every government-built tower that collapsed.
Structural engineers, specialists in Venezuelan construction practices and seismologists who reviewed the evidence said the flaws could have made the towers more vulnerable to powerful earthquakes. They cautioned, however, that proving a direct cause after such intense tremors is difficult.
“This is how a concrete structure fails if it’s not done right,” structural engineer Kit Miyamoto said while in Caracas.
A government commission was set up after the earthquakes to assess affected buildings. Nearly 100 buildings are being examined using material samples and measurements, commission president Francisco Garcés told “CNN”.
Construction concerns predated the earthquakes
Residents had complained about problems in the towers for nearly a decade. Commissioned in 2011 by then-President Hugo Chávez, the buildings were the subject of local media reports about persistent water intrusion, damaged pipes and sewage leaks.
The 15 collapsed towers were among dozens built across Venezuela under Chávez, many intended to house families displaced by flooding and landslides in 2010. The developments were built near the San Sebastián fault line on Venezuela’s coast and were overseen by the Presidential Office of Special Plans and Projects (OPPPE). Chávez had established the office two years earlier as part of a plan to build three million homes in nine years.
The housing developments were built in barely a year. Francisco Sesto, then the OPPPE director and chief architect and a longtime friend of Chávez, described the process on his personal blog. He wrote that the president had demanded 200,000 homes in 2012, the year the towers were built.
Former OPPPE principal Lucas Pou told “CNN” that the office routinely awarded contracts without bids under an emergency directive to accelerate construction, but said he had not worked on the Caraballeda projects. Sesto described the office’s mission as “a gigantic effort carried out with an intensity never before seen in Venezuela” and wrote that construction teams worked in two to three shifts each day to meet deadlines.
Sesto did not respond to “CNN”’s requests for comment. He told “The New York Times” that he did not consider it “journalistically sound to focus on a handful of Great Mission buildings that collapsed, given that hundreds of private buildings also collapsed.”
Tens of thousands of buildings collapsed in the earthquakes. The OPPPE developments were among the largest residential buildings to fall in coastal La Guaira state. Satellite imagery indicates that 63% of the high-rise towers built by a special public housing authority in Caraballeda collapsed.
Interim President Delcy Rodríguez ordered the suspension of the OPPPE in February, a few months before the earthquakes.
Images show possible rebar and concrete defects
Venezuela’s 2006 building code, in force when the towers were constructed, required short pieces of rebar known as “stirrups” to be bent at 135-degree angles in high-rises across La Guaira. The measure is intended to make it harder for earthquakes to break or dislodge the ties reinforcing beams and columns.
Images from the five complexes, taken during construction from 2011 onward and after the 2026 earthquakes, appear to show some stirrups bent at only 90 degrees. Experts said this likely violated Venezuelan building regulations and could affect whether a structure holds together or fails during a severe earthquake.
During powerful seismic shaking, even a few improperly assembled stirrups could compromise a beam or column, said Jeffrey Dowgala and Terrence Paret, structural engineers specialising in earthquake resilience at Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates. Miyamoto compared the defect to a wine barrel without properly assembled steel straps.
After the earthquakes, Miyamoto and a team of about 100 engineers worked under Venezuela’s Ministry of Public Works to assess the structural integrity of surviving buildings. He told “CNN” that the stirrup problem was widespread in the rubble he examined in La Guaira. Venezuela’s Communications Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
A photograph from an OPPPE inspection in March 2012 appears to show defective stirrups at the foundation of a tower in the OPPPE 27 complex. All four towers at the site collapsed 14 years later. Experts said several photographs of the ruins show that at least some of the defects had not been corrected.
Of more than 40 photographs and videos verified by “CNN” that specifically showed stirrups, only a small minority clearly showed them bent correctly. Images from at least two collapsed complexes also appear to show rebar supports placed close together but rarely bundled, as the 2006 code requires. The code says strands must either be bundled to act as one unit or separated by a gap of at least one bar diameter, and sometimes more depending on their placement.
Experts said this could also weaken a concrete building and pointed to inconsistencies in construction methods. Footage taken after the earthquakes appears to show deep rust on rebar in at least three collapsed OPPPE complexes. Miyamoto estimated that about half of the collapsed buildings in the area showed signs of corrosion.
Caraballeda’s tropical beachfront climate may have contributed to corrosion, as may impurities in the concrete. Two workers who helped build one public housing complex told “The New York Times” that their team stretched materials by mixing other products into the concrete. The newspaper also found no visible shear walls in the towers and said the uniform orientation of their columns weakened them against seismic forces.
Residents also described problems they associated with poor-quality concrete. A neighbour who often visited friends in OPPPE 26 recalled that “the floor would crack from any impact”. Quiroz said she did not remember similar incidents and had not witnessed major water or sewage leaks.
In October 2025, an OPPPE 26 resident told “La Verdad” that his wife was injured when a piece of their living room ceiling came loose and fell on her. “Luckily, she was able to cover her head and only suffered a shoulder injury,” he told “La Verdad de Vargas”.
Five OPPPE 25 towers survived and were evacuated
Several towers built by the special office remain standing, including some near the Caraballeda complex where Quiroz’s sister died. A complex with nearly 700 apartments stands just over half a mile east of the collapsed towers.
Of the seven towers in OPPPE 25, five survived the twin earthquakes. They have since been evacuated, and displaced residents are camping in tents outside, María Sánchez, a resident, told “CNN”. It is unclear whether the buildings will be used again.
A photograph taken during OPPPE 25’s construction in March 2012 appears to show stirrups with the same 90-degree bends. “CNN” contacted the Venezuelan government and the office of La Guaira Mayor José Manuel Suárez Maldonado but had not received a response.
Thomas Bordeaux and Abel Alvarado contributed to the report.
