Ten Venezuelan Housing Towers Collapsed in June Quakes, New York Times Analysis Finds

Ten of the public housing towers analyzed in a New York Times interactive collapsed during Venezuela's earthquakes in June, the newspaper reported on October 20. The piece, titled "How Venezuela's Public Housing Towers Were Built to Fail," looks at how the buildings were put up. One of the projects it examines, known as OPPPE 27, consists of one freestanding tower and a group of three towers standing side by side.

The collapses followed two strong earthquakes that struck seconds apart in June 2026, with magnitudes of 7.2 and 7.5. Reuters later reported that some 59,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed. Magnitude is a standard measure of an earthquake's size on the energy it releases, and the two shocks were among the largest to strike the country.

Early reporting pointed to the way the buildings were constructed. The New York Times reported on June 25 that many of the collapsed buildings appeared to be made of brittle concrete without enough steel reinforcement, the metal bars that help concrete bend rather than break when the ground shakes.

Warnings had come earlier. The Los Angeles Times reported on June 27 that engineers had cautioned before the earthquakes that tall buildings could collapse. It cited a study finding that Venezuelan tall buildings placed on soft soils had a more than 80% chance of collapsing when shaken violently. Soft soil can amplify ground movement, and the study's findings were reported as the researchers' own conclusions.

On June 29, Reuters reported that experts blamed weak enforcement of building codes, the rules that govern how structures are designed and checked, along with unstable soil, for the collapses. El País, in a report dated June 27, said the damage had renewed debate over the safety standards required for buildings in countries prone to earthquakes.

The most recent major investigation came from the Associated Press, which published its findings on September 30. It linked the collapse of public housing towers in Venezuela's La Guaira state, after the two June earthquakes, to decisions made in 2010.