Week 3 Andrew Shaver
Earthquakes in Venezuela
Being located by where the South American Plate and the Caribbean plate meet, Venezuela is prone to earthquakes. The northern part of Venezuela by Caracas is the most prone region in the country. According to an earthquake list that is always updating, earthquakes with magnitude 4.2-5.0 happen all the time, seeing that the last one was 20 hours from when this was written (Earthquakelist.org). All of these earthquakes keep with the trend of it being in Caracas. The rest of Venezuela is quite calm since it is farther out from the transform boundary. Earthquake list also informs that there are on average a total of 95 earthquakes annually. There are different ways to prepare for or mitigate an earthquake in Venezuela. The Science Direct article on the Seismic Microzoning Project states that the project is a "probabilistic assessment of seismic hazard at rock sites; identification of soil and basin site effects; definition of microzones of similar seismic response" (Science Direct). This former project set out to predict and lessen the effects of earthquakes. Since the earthquakes in Venezuela tend to stay in the 4-5 range there is not much of an effort to mitigate a catastrophic earthquake. A government website on foreign travel advice states that people in Venezuela should watch media reports and listen to local authorities as well as directs them to another website called Ready that gives advice on how to prepare for a natural disaster (Gov.UK).
https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/venezuela/natural-disasters#:~:text=Venezuela%20is%20vulnerable%20to%20earthquakes,US%20Federal%20Emergency%20Management%20Agency.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590061719300602
https://earthquakelist.org/venezuela/
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