When the ground beneath Venezuela started violently rocking on Wednesday evening, Verónica feared the walls of her Caracas apartment would bury her. She was at home celebrating a national holiday when two large earthquakes hit the city, seconds apart: the first at magnitude 7.2 and the second at 7.5. By the following day, more than 160 people had been confirmed dead, hundreds more were injured, and over 26,000 had been reported missing. The quakes levelled buildings in the capital and along the northern coast, leaving rescue workers digging through rubble while power and internet outages hampered efforts.
So what exactly causes an earthquake, and why should people in the UK care? An earthquake is the sudden shaking of the ground caused by the movement of tectonic plates — the huge slabs of rock that make up the Earth’s surface. These plates are constantly moving, but sometimes they get stuck at their edges due to friction. When the stress becomes too great, the plates slip suddenly, releasing energy in the form of seismic waves. That is what happened in Venezuela: the Caribbean and South American plates shifted along a fault line near the town of Morón, generating two powerful tremors 39 seconds apart.
“What causes earthquakes, how they are measured, and why the UK should pay attention.”
The strength of an earthquake is measured on the moment magnitude scale, which replaced the older Richter scale. A magnitude 7.5 quake, like the second one in Venezuela, is classified as “major” and can cause serious damage over a large area. For comparison, a 6.6 magnitude earthquake struck Caracas in 1967, killing more than 200 people and destroying buildings in the Palos Grandes and Altamira districts. The 2026 quakes were the largest to hit Venezuela in over a century, according to authorities.
For UK readers, the immediate thought might be that earthquakes are a distant problem. The United Kingdom is not located near a tectonic plate boundary, so it experiences far fewer and much weaker earthquakes than countries like Venezuela or Japan. The largest recorded UK earthquake was a magnitude 6.1 quake off the coast of Norfolk in 1931, and most are barely noticeable. However, the UK is not completely immune. Small tremors occur regularly, and a magnitude 5.2 quake near Market Rasen in 2008 caused some structural damage and was felt across England and Wales. While a 7.5 magnitude earthquake is extremely unlikely in Britain, the Venezuela disaster is a reminder that earthquakes can happen anywhere, and that buildings in the UK are generally not designed to withstand strong seismic shaking.
Q: What causes earthquakes? Earthquakes occur when stress builds up along fault lines in the Earth’s crust, causing tectonic plates to suddenly slip past each other. This releases energy that travels through the ground as seismic waves. Most earthquakes happen near plate boundaries, but they can also be triggered by human activity such as mining or reservoir filling.
Q: How are earthquakes measured? Earthquakes are measured using the moment magnitude scale, which quantifies the energy released. Each whole number increase (for example, from 7.2 to 7.5) corresponds to about 32 times more energy. The scale is open-ended, but most earthquakes are minor (below 3.0) and go unnoticed. Major quakes above 7.0 can cause widespread destruction.
Q: Could a similar earthquake happen in the UK? The UK is far from active plate boundaries, so a magnitude 7.5 earthquake is considered very unlikely. However, the country does experience small to moderate earthquakes — typically between magnitude 2 and 5 — a few times each year. The largest known UK earthquake was a magnitude 6.1 in 1931, which caused some damage but no deaths. Building codes in the UK do not generally include seismic design, so even a moderate quake could cause damage in vulnerable structures.
What happens next in Venezuela? Rescue teams are continuing to search for survivors, with the death toll expected to rise. Acting president Delcy Rodríguez said much of the worst damage was in Caracas and the coastal area around La Guaira, where the airport sustained severe damage and was closed. International aid has begun to arrive: Pope Leo sent an initial €100,000 emergency donation, and US President Donald Trump stated that the US stands ready to help. The earthquakes have also added to Venezuela’s existing political and humanitarian crisis, with the country already facing shortages and instability.