u/SoftHouse9442

I’m from Caracas, Venezuela. My building didn’t suffer much damage, I believe because it sits on top of rocky, mountainous terrain. However, lots of my friends and family got serious cracks and damage in their buildings. Of course structural engineers will eventually come look at it, but just for fun, or a bit of momentary relief, I want to have a slight idea how bad it is.

I’m gonna run through some visible damage that occurred and you’ll tell me how bad they are, just at face value:

In a steel supported building:

• Concrete spalling in a beam and showing (unbent) rebar

In a reinforced concrete building (mostly on the lower floors):

• Big X shaped cracks on the building facade exposing red bricks

• Crack completely ripping the plaster and some brick from a small section at the top left corner of a wall, letting light in from the outside

• X shaped cracks ripping plaster and some brick showing the red inside of the brick on a wall

• Some walls looking slightly separated from the ceiling/floor

• Tiny, superficial cracks in the columns

I’m not using this as a guide to reenter the building. I’m using this as a “should I look up to possibly recovering this in the mid to far future”

I’m Venezuelan from Caracas (yes, im ok)

I was outside at a mountain with rocky terrain during the quake… First I felt some mild shaking that didn’t make any loud noise. It wasn’t that bad and we’d just had an earthquake like that last year I think so I just stood there, waiting for it to stop.

Then it fucking started. It was like a bomb went off below the ground, almost rocking me off my feet. Loud thumps everywhere, buildings making crashing sounds…

But the noise that I remember the most is some kind of rumble coming from the ground. Like having two lions roaring right below each one of your ears. The scariest noise I have ever heard

What causes all of that noise? Also, has anyone here heard something like that before? What did it feel like to you?

I set the flair to triggering content content because it’s really gross, so if you’re eating and have a vivid imagination then stop reading.

I left a book bag in my apartment before I went to visit family in a different part of my country for about 5 weeks. This is a book bag I use pretty much every day, to store stuff like books and even my everyday lunch.

When I came back to my apartment, everything seemed fine until I came to my bedroom, as there was a weird smell coming from the closet in that room. When I opened the closet the smell got worse and I saw a few fruit flies around the closet flying around.

Eventually I realized the smell came from the bag. On closer inspection it smelled very much like the strongest and most pungent cheese I have ever smelled. Putting two and two together, I realized that I might have forgot some leftover lunch in the bag… And left it to rot for 5 weeks.

I left it there smelling for one night since I didn’t have any gloves and I was too tired from the trip to go to the store and buy any. I was NOT gonna handle whatever 9th circle of hell was in there with my bare hands. I just closed the closet and left the windows open for the night.

I bought the gloves and everything next morning. Sprayed some perfume in a mask like a plague doctor, put gloves on, opened the windows and started cleaning.

Worms. Maggots. Lots. All of their little parts moving like mushy rice, on some weird yellow substance around the walls of the bag. The lunch container was open and it had spilled all over the walls of the book bag.

I HATE worms. They’re one of my worst fears since I was a child. I had parasites as a kid and they left me with an irrational fear of worms.

I was having a meltdown out there. I eventually kept going and put all the books in paper towels that I had lined up to cover a significant portion of the floor. I disposed of the books bag by putting it in one of those big garbage bags and taking the hell out of it.

Some books had a few maggots but one of them, the one closer to the affected wall, was absolutely covered in one side. I HAD to clean the books since they had important notes in them. I just used a ton of bleach since plain alcohol wouldn’t do anything to the maggots.

I. Hated. Every. Second. I used towels covered in bleach and eventually got rid of the maggots thoroughly.

I feel weird now. Like the moment hasn’t passed yet. This happened a few days ago and I still feel weird thinking that one of the maggots might have fallen in my bed or about how their tiny moving parts were doing in that fucking atrocious cheese spill. I think I might have trauma or whatever

I caused it all myself for being forgetful so I didn’t really want to share with anyone IRL. It’s gross. I ended up putting a bunch of fruit fly traps to kill the ones that were already developed.