Portugal Colonial - Mothers search, men weep amid debris of Venezuela quakes

Neighbors looked on helplessly at the home's remains as one of them clambered around the debris, listening out for responses but hearing only silence.

"We need flashlights," said one of the improvised volunteers, with just one police officer accompanying the group as they waited for rescue workers to arrive.

"Tania, Tania," another name echoed around the devastated site, which was part of the Petunia residential complex in the well-to-do Los Palos Grandes neighborhood that normally bustles with restaurants and cafes.

One man wept quietly in the street.

At around 6pm local time (2200GMT), two earthquakes struck the same part of Venezuela in quick succession.

The tremors of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), caused buildings to crumble across the capital, scattering their inhabitants out into the streets.

Twenty aftershocks followed, according to interim leader Delcy Rodriguez, while Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said the states of Trujillo, Carabobo, Miranda and La Guaira were the hardest hit.

It remains unknown if there were any fatalities, and although Cabello reported injuries, he did not specify a number.

The strongest tremors in earthquake-prone Venezuela's recent history occurred in the northeast in 1997, killing 73 people, and in Caracas in 1967, when 236 people died.

Los Palos Grandes suffered terribly in the 1967 quake too, with entire buildings also collapsing during that incident.

- 'Deep roar' -

Just a few blocks away, people exiting a shopping center were in a state of shock.

"The stairs came away, the whole wall cracked. Things fell from the ceiling. It was horrible," said 54-year-old bank employee Odalis Escalona.

Zenia Gonzalez, 52, comforted a teenage girl still in tears.

"We waited for it to pass and then ran down the escalator," Gonzalez told AFP.

"We had to wait because it was shaking too much. It lasted a long time," she added.

Panicked screams had filled the air as people scrambled out of the building.

In the nearby neighborhood of La Castellana, Maria Romero also fled her apartment in a hurry.

"It was moving a lot and sounded like a deep roar," the 48-year-old engineer told AFP, adding that she had initially dithered about what to do.

"For a second I thought about getting under the table, but I decided to get out," she said.

Buildings across the city were destroyed, while Rodriguez announced a state of emergency and declared the country's main airport closed due to "severe damage" following the quakes.

Shortly after Venezuela's twin tremors, another powerful earthquake hit northern Japan, the country's weather agency said, with no casualties or material damage reported.

P.Mira--PC