Michael Snyder.
Our planet is starting to shake like crazy, and a lot of people out there are really beginning to freak out. On Wednesday alone, California was hit by a magnitude 5.6 earthquake, Japan was hit by a magnitude 7.2 earthquake, and Venezuela was hit by a magnitude 7.2 earthquake and a magnitude 7.5 earthquake.
The second quake was the most powerful quake that Venezuela has experienced in more than a century. Dozens of aftershocks have already been recorded, and there is no way to count the number of structures that have collapsed. So much damage has been done that the situation on the ground is being compared to a “horror movie”, and it is being reported that tens of thousands of people are potentially missing.
Over 188 people have been reported dead and as many as 41,000 are missing following the two earthquakes that struck Venezuela on Wednesday, according to government and USGS counts.
A magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck the south American country around 160 km (100 miles) west of Caracas, and less than a minute one with a magnitude of 7.5 followed, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS), which estimated total deaths to be in the thousands.
Hundreds of people in Venezuela were trapped under rubble and many more still unaccounted for on Thursday after two powerful earthquakes wreaked havoc in and around the capital Caracas, setting off powerful aftershocks and leaving thousands homeless.
The official death toll will inevitably go much higher as more dead bodies are pulled out of the rubble.
And Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez is telling us that the initial figures that have been released do not even include the coastal state of Venezuela that was hit the hardest.
In an early update on June 25, acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez warned that the death toll is expected to climb as rescuers continue searching through the rubble. She noted that initial figures do not include casualties from La Guaira, a coastal state in northern Venezuela that was hit the hardest by the powerful tremors.
“Dozens of buildings have collapsed, and we are currently carrying out very intense rescue efforts to save as many lives as God allows us to save,” she said in an appearance on state television just before 1 a.m. local time.
So many precious people are trapped under the rubble right now.
Venezuela normally does not experience such powerful earthquakes, and most of the buildings are not built to withstand this kind of shaking.
One man that actually lives in La Guaira told AFP that he was extremely fortunate to escape the building that he lived in just before it collapsed.
La Guaira resident Antonio Bermudez told the AFP news agency that the shaking began “all of a sudden.” He was in his living room, he said, but escaped his building before it collapsed.
“I started to move, I looked for shelter under a column. I was between my room and the shower. It shook harder and harder,” Bermudez sid. “I held onto the wall and the building started to come down.”
It is going to take Venezuela a very long time to recover from this.
Shortly after the twin quakes, the USGS projected that the final death toll will likely exceed 10,000 victims.
The U.S. Geological Survey, using predictive modeling to estimate the death toll, said it would most likely run into the thousands, with a substantial probability of exceeding 10,000.
Sadly, this is our new normal.
“Billion dollar disasters” are happening in rapid fire fashion, and so historic events that happened just a few weeks ago are quickly forgotten.
For instance, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake that hit the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines earlier this month was so powerful that it permanently changed the geography of the coastline.
Arsenio Butil Jr. fell to his knees and began to pray when last week’s deadly 7.8-magnitude earthquake began shaking his home on the coast of the southern Philippines.
When he opened his eyes, he saw a once-familiar shoreline changing in real time, with swaths of previously submerged coral suddenly pushing above the waterline.
The June 8 quake, driven by a shifting of the nearby Cotabato Trench, toppled buildings, triggered landslides and killed at least 76 people on the southern island of Mindanao.
The tectonic forces at work also thrust chunks of the island’s coastline upward in a phenomenon known as “coastal uplift,” leaving stretches of shore unrecognizable to families who have spent their whole lives there.
How many of you were still thinking about this disaster before I just mentioned it?
Vast stretches of Mindanao’s coastline are now radically different, but we treat it like it isn’t that big of a deal.
We have become numb to all the craziness that is happening all around us, and the truth is that far worse is ahead.
Revelation chapter 6 describes a great earthquake that will be unlike anything that humanity has ever witnessed before.
12 And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;
13 And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.
14 And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.
15 And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains;
16 And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:
17 For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?
This is what our future is going to look like.
We are going to experience apocalyptic seismic events that will alter entire continents.
So yes, what we are witnessing right now is certainly quite dramatic.
But these earthquakes are not even worth comparing to what is eventually coming.
