Venezuela just got hit with a straight-up nightmare. On Wednesday night, the northern coast got rocked by a double-whammy of massive earthquakes—we’re talking a 7.2 and a 7.5 hitting back-to-back within sixty seconds. It’s the worst shaking the country has seen since way back in 1900, and right now, the death toll is sitting at 164 and counting. When the ground started rolling just after 6:00 PM, nobody was safe, and people in Caracas had to run for their lives as apartment buildings crumbled into dust.

Over in the wealthy areas like Los Palos Grandes and Altamira—where you got all the luxury hotels, expensive restaurants, and the British and German embassies—at least three residential buildings completely pancaked. Sebastian Rodríguez, an 18-year-old helping run his family's shop in Centro Plaza, said the whole world felt out of pocket. He had to physically carry his mom out of the building because she was totally paralyzed by fear. The plaza itself—a beast of a concrete building from the 1970s oil boom—held up, but the rest of the block wasn't so lucky.

Once the sun went down, the streets turned into a rescue zone. You had families, volunteers, and doctors digging through heavy concrete and twisted metal with their bare hands, praying to find people alive. Jessica Galvis, a 33-year-old doctor, was standing by a collapsed six-story building waiting on news about her friend trapped inside. Another guy, 61-year-old José Morillo, rode his motorcycle across the city hoping his brother, son, and nephews were still breathing under the wreckage. He got a bit of hope when they pulled a female relative out of the dirt alive, but the whole situation is heavy.

But if you want to talk about who’s hurting the most, look at the working-class hood of Catia. These folks were already surviving through one of the worst peacetime economic struggles in modern history, and this disaster just stripped away the little they had left. The houses in Catia aren't built like those fancy reinforced embassies, and the damage here is pure devastation.

José Luis, a PE teacher from Catia, watched his walls turn to dust while water started pouring through his broken roof. He’s out on the street now, sleeping on cardboard and mattresses like hundreds of others because they’re too terrified of aftershocks to go back inside. He’s begging the government to send firefighters and rescue crews before the rest of the buildings collapse on their heads. But in the hood, people already know you can't rely on the state to save you when things go south.