CNN analysis uncovers construction flaws in public housing towers that collapsed during Venezuela quakes

By Avery Schmitz, Osmary Hernández, Alfredo Meza, Lisa Wong, CNN

(CNN) — The day after massive dual earthquakes shattered Venezuela, Ailin Quiroz made her way toward the coast to search for her sister. She found only a mountain of rubble where her apartment building had once stood.

Quiroz climbed through the ruins for hours but found no trace of her sister or six other relatives who lived in the 13-story tower. Now, she’s tormented by a question: Why did their building collapse while other nearby high-rises survived?

The building was one of 15 public housing towers in the coastal town of Caraballeda that collapsed in the 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude quakes on June 24.

Though the government has yet to release a comprehensive list of people killed, thousands of public housing residents likely perished in the disaster. Each tower, over eight stories tall, had at least 240 apartments.

A CNN analysis of videos and images of some of those buildings — both during an extraordinarily fast construction process and after their collapse — suggests that construction flaws may have contributed to the mass tragedy.

That visual evidence appears to show improperly assembled rebar supports — steel bars meant to reinforce the strength of concrete — in apparent building code violations at five government-built complexes, where the 15 collapsed towers once stood. In three of the complexes, images also show deep-seated rust in metal supports, which experts say could be a sign of poor-quality concrete. It is unclear whether these building defects were present in every government-built tower that fell.

Experts in structural engineering, Venezuelan building practices, and seismology who reviewed evidence of the defects said those faults could have made the towers more prone to collapsing in massive earthquakes, though they also cautioned that it’s difficult to prove a direct cause following the massive tremors.

“This is how a concrete structure fails if it’s not done right,” structural engineer Kit Miyamoto explained while on the ground in Caracas.

Immediately after the earthquakes, a government commission was established to analyze affected buildings. Nearly 100 buildings are being analyzed using material samples and measurements, commission President Francisco Garcés told CNN.

One disaster to the next

For nearly a decade, residents had complained of problems in the towers, which were commissioned in 2011 by then-Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. Local media reported dozens of residents’ complaints about persistent water intrusion, damaged pipes, and sewage leaks.

The 15 towers that later fell were among dozens built across Venezuela by the Chávez regime, many intended to house families displaced by a flooding and landslide disaster in 2010.

Located near the San Sebastián fault line on Venezuela’s coast, their construction came under the responsibility of the Presidential Office of Special Plans and Projects (OPPPE), which Chávez had created two years earlier as part of his sweeping ambition to build three million homes in nine years.

These housing developments were constructed in barely a year. The Office of Special Plans and Projects’ then director and chief architect — Chávez’s longtime friend Francisco Sesto — detailed the process in his personal blog, writing that the president demanded 200,000 homes to be built in 2012 alone, the year of their construction.

Former OPPPE principal Lucas Pou told CNN it was standard practice for the Office to award no-bid contracts under an emergency directive to help speed things along but said he hadn’t worked on the Caraballeda housing projects.

In his blog, Sesto describes the OPPPE’s mission as “a gigantic effort carried out with an intensity never before seen in Venezuela.” To stay on schedule, he wrote, construction teams rotated through two to three shifts every day.

Sesto did not respond to CNN’s multiple requests for comment on this story but told The New York Times that he does not consider it “journalistically sound to focus on a handful of Great Mission buildings that collapsed, given that hundreds of private buildings also collapsed.”

While tens of thousands of buildings collapsed from the quakes, these OPPPE developments were among the largest residential buildings to fall in coastal La Guaira state.

Satellite imagery shows that in Caraballeda, 63% of all high-rise towers built by a special public housing authority collapsed.

Interim President Delcy Rodríguez ordered the suspension of the OPPPE in February, a few months before the earthquakes.

Rebar issues

Venezuela’s 2006 building code — which was in effect when the buildings were constructed — required that short pieces of rebar, or “stirrups,” be bent to 135-degree angles in every high-rise building across La Guaira. This safeguard makes it harder for earthquakes to break or unseat the ties that reinforce beams and columns.

But images captured across these five complexes (each comprised of several individually built towers) during their construction starting in 2011 and after the 2026 earthquakes show that some stirrups appeared to be bent to only 90 degrees. This difference likely violated Venezuelan building regulations, and experts say it could be the difference between a structure failing catastrophically or holding together during a severe earthquake.

During strong seismic shaking, just a few improperly assembled stirrups could compromise the integrity of a beam or column, said Jeffrey Dowgala and Terrence Paret, structural engineers with expertise in earthquake resilience at Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates.

Miyamoto, a structural engineer who has led post-earthquake damage assessments around the world, most recently in Venezuela, likened the stirrups defect to a wine barrel without properly assembled steel straps.

Following the quakes, Miyamoto and his team of roughly 100 engineers have worked under Venezuela’s Ministry of Public Works to assess the structural integrity of surviving buildings.

Venezuela’s Communications Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

Miyamoto told CNN the stirrups issue was pervasive in the rubble of buildings he assessed in La Guaira.

A photograph taken during an OPPPE inspection of one construction site in March 2012 appears to show several stirrups containing the defect at the foundation of one tower in the complex known as OPPPE 27. All four towers at that site collapsed when the earthquakes hit 14 years later.

Multiple photos of the same complex’s ruins following the earthquakes show that at least some of those defective stirrups were never rectified, experts said.

Of more than 40 photos and videos CNN verified that specifically showed the stirrups, only a small minority were clearly bent properly.

Images of at least two fallen complexes highlight another possible issue with the buildings’ rebar supports: they appear to be spaced closely but are only rarely bundled, as the 2006 code requires. To comply with the code, rebar strands must either be bundled together to act as a single unit or be separated by a gap of at least one bar diameter — and sometimes more, depending on their placement.

This, too, can degrade the structural integrity of a concrete building, experts say, and underscores inconsistencies in the building techniques used.

The condition of the rebar, exposed after the buildings collapsed, has also raised concerns. Footage captured after the quakes appears to show deep-seated rust in rebar in at least three collapsed OPPPE complexes; about half of collapsed buildings in this area bore signs of corrosion, Miyamoto estimates.

Caraballeda’s tropical, beachfront climate could have been a factor, as well as possible impurities in the concrete used, which can eat away at the metal bars.

Two construction workers who worked on one of the public housing complexes told The New York Times their team stretched materials by mixing other products into the concrete. The Times also found that the towers had no visible shear walls, and that the uniform orientation of their columns weakened these high-rises against seismic forces.

Resident accounts also described issues symptomatic of poor-quality concrete. One neighbor, who often visited friends in OPPPE 26, recounted how “the floor would crack from any impact.”

For her part, Quiroz doesn’t recall any similar incidents, nor did she witness any major water or sewage leaks.

In October of 2025, a resident of OPPPE 26 told La Verdad that his wife was injured when a chunk of their living room ceiling dislodged and fell on her.

“Luckily, she was able to cover her head and only suffered a shoulder injury,” he recalled in an interview with La Verdad de Vargas.

An open question

Today, several towers built by the special office remain standing — some not far from the Caraballeda complex where Quiroz’s sister died.

Just over half a mile east from the Caraballeda towers stands another complex built by the special office and comprised of nearly 700 apartments.

Of its seven towers, five survived this year’s twin earthquakes. They have now been evacuated and displaced residents are camping in tents outside, according to María Sánchez, a resident who spoke to CNN.

It is unclear whether those buildings will be put back into use. A 2012 photo taken during construction of the complex, named OPPPE 25, shows rebar stirrups assembled with the same 90-degree bends.

CNN reached out to the Venezuelan government and the office of the mayor of La Guaira, José Manuel Suárez Maldonado, but is yet to hear back.

CNN’s Thomas Bordeaux and Abel Alvarado contributed to this report.

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