Independent South Florida journalist Maria Alesia Sosa is used to difficult stories.
Growing up in Caracas, the 40-year-old Venezuelan native recalls her parents telling her the frightening story of the earthquake of 1967, a 6.6 magnitude quake that left her country’s generation terrified of another one.
As a reporter for Univision in Miami, she covered the catastrophic 2021 collapse of the Champlain Towers South condominium in Surfside that left 98 people dead. After having watched the terror unfold on the ground, she said that story always stuck with her.
Last week, Sosa traveled to Venezuela to visit relatives in Caracas — and Wednesday morning edited a commemorative video of the five-year anniversary of the Surfside tragedy.
That night, as she watched the World Cup on TV with her husband and children, the first of two massive earthquakes struck her home country.
The back-to-back tremors measuring 7.2 and 7.5 in magnitude rocked Venezuela, unleashing destruction across the capital and surrounding areas. As of Monday morning, authorities say at least 1,450 people have been killed, with more than 3,300 injured and 12,000 displaced.
For Sosa, the unfolding nightmare was a horrific collision of her past and her present.
"The sound is the most scary, terrifying, horrible thing," Sosa said, recalling the moments she and her family fled into their garden for safety. "The sound of the earth, and the windows and the doors banging, the lamps banging, everything in the kitchen just falling apart, everyone running."
Looking out at a landscape of collapsed buildings, it all felt terrifyingly familiar, Sosa told WLRN in a telephone interview.
'Surfside a hundred times over’
"What I'm seeing here is like Surfside a hundred times over," Sosa said. "It's a déjà vu of the rubble, of the victims, of desperate families yelling and screaming trying to find survivors, and I just can't believe this is happening again."
The tragedy has also brought back memories of El Terremoto de ’67.
“We all grew up with that terrible story of the earthquake of '67. And we grew up in fear, expecting that one day it could happen again,” she said.
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Sosa said she and her immediate family are safe, but she says that the images circulating online don't capture the true gravity of the situation, especially for residents trapped in the rubble of flattened high-rise buildings.
"Social media cannot even show what it really is like on the ground," she said. "It's really way worse than what you are seeing in the media."
Sosa said Venezuela and its government is completely unequipped to handle a humanitarian emergency of this magnitude.
"The response has been insufficient. There is no heavy machinery, not enough rescuers and firemen. Agencies do not have resources at all. They have nothing," Sosa said. "This happened in the worst possible moment."
Frustration with rescue, recovery efforts
She expressed deep frustration over the lack of government mobilization, drawing a sharp contrast to how the state has deployed its resources in the past.
"There's an image that's being shared on social media of the huge movement and deployment of the military in 2014 and 2017, when the young were out in the streets protesting for freedom. The National Guard and all the state forces were out in the street shooting at the young people," Sosa said.
"But now, this is not what we're seeing. What we're seeing is volunteer rescuers and firemen using their hands to try to dig into that rubble pile and get someone out."
She was glad that, at the very least, Venezuela was finally visible, and several countries were sending aid and resources. On Friday, her family headed to La Guaira to deliver medical supplies in hospitals and help rescue efforts among the rubble.
Some of the heaviest damage and casualties were in that coastal region north of the capital Caracas, according to media reports.
With her experience as a reporter as her guide, Sosa said she wants to amplify the voices of those who needed rescuing, medical attention and resources.
“I will raise my voice and try to amplify those messages of the buildings that haven't got any rescue teams,” Sosa said. “We're planning on bringing resources down there and trying to repost on my social media and trying to raise awareness for those people that are being unheard.”
