A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
More than 5,000 people were killed when twin earthquakes hit a coastal area of Venezuela last month. Now the World Bank is putting a price tag on the physical damage to infrastructure and housing near the capital Caracas, $19.6 billion. NPR's Michele Kelemen met with a U.N. official who helped assess the destruction.
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: William Squier Gonzalez is with the U.N. Office for Project Services, part of the United Nations that deals with infrastructure and logistics. He's seen natural disasters before, but the devastation in Venezuela reminded him more of a war zone.
WILLIAM SQUIER GONZALEZ: What's surprising about La Guaira is that you see all types of patterns. You see entire 20-story buildings coming completely flat. You see some that have been tipping. You see some where 20-story buildings have now become five-story buildings, but the rest of the 15 other stories are actually completely lying under it.
KELEMEN: And it goes on for miles in that coastal town of La Guaira, while more modest homes up in the hills remain intact.
SQUIER GONZALEZ: So the diversity of the destruction and just the fact that it's along a coastline just makes it overly dramatic.
KELEMEN: The World Bank says that 47% of the total damage occurred in residential buildings. So getting temporary housing for Venezuelans is a key priority now. Squier Gonzalez says they'll also have to do some forensic engineering to see where it makes sense to rebuild. It's not so easy to blame shoddy construction or a lack of building codes. This area had been hit by natural disasters before. And this time it was struck by two earthquakes that moved in different directions and twisted columns that shouldn't move that way.
SQUIER GONZALEZ: For example, I have never seen this in my life. I have seen columns, concrete columns being completely torn vertically, which is not the way mechanical efforts are supposed to be working on a column. The probability of this kind of thing happening is extremely low. And being able to plan for this kind of thing is also very low.
KELEMEN: President Trump, who sent the U.S. military to capture Venezuela's president earlier this year, says both the U.S. and Venezuela are making a lot of money now from Venezuelan oil.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And we paid for the war many times over.
KELEMEN: The State Department wouldn't say if any of that oil revenue will go to rebuild Venezuela. It says in a statement that it's working with the Venezuelan interim government to unlock domestic resources for reconstruction and help Venezuela get access to capital.
Michele Kelemen, NPR News, the State Department. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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