The Mick Jagger of earthquakes
Engineer Kit Miyamoto has become a celebrity in Venezuela, where he is managing the disaster after the twin quakes on June 24
The planes seem to skim the zinc rooftops as they come in to land. But this Friday, not even the roar of engines approaching the recently reopened Maiquetía International Airport can distract residents from their excitement. They have been waiting for hours to see Kit Miyamoto, who has become something of a celebrity in Venezuela since the twin earthquakes of June 24, which killed at least 6,509 people and left hundreds still missing. “It’s one of the most intense scenes I’ve seen in the last 20 years,” Miyamoto tells EL PAÍS.
The engineer, who is of Japanese descent and based in California, initially arrived as part of what he describes as a U.S. “diplomatic gesture” to help assess damage to 7,000 buildings. Now, the Venezuelan government has hired him to oversee the three million tons of rubble that will result from the demolition effort.
He is a star in his field — “the Mick Jagger of earthquakes,” as one colleague nicknamed him — but in the working-class neighborhoods of La Guaira, he is above all the man people believe can help speed up their future, deciding whether their homes can be repaired or must be torn down. The sooner that decision comes, the sooner they can begin again.
“El Chino,” “Minimoto,” “Makamoto”... as Miyamoto makes his way through the neighborhood, residents of La Lucha call out to him by a variety of nicknames. They barely let him move a few steps without asking for a selfie, a hug, or trying to pull him toward their homes in the hope that he will inspect them. He stops, poses for photos, speaks a little Spanish, and visits every house where he is asked to go.
Miyamoto has spent two decades working in the aftermath of some of the world’s worst disasters, but the warmth of ordinary Venezuelans has taken him by surprise. “I’m really surprised by how energetic people are here, especially in working-class neighborhoods. They lost their jobs, many lost their homes, but they are not giving up. They have incredible resilience, and almost an optimism that the future will be better, which I do believe will happen.”
When asked if he has seen this response in other countries, Miyamoto replies: “No, this is not normal. People here have a lot of energy to rebuild, and it’s different. People have been repressed for 35 years, right? Things are changing. This earthquake was one shock on top of another shock. But something had to change. And it did.”
Miyamoto inspects columns and load-bearing walls, delivering verdicts as he goes. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but this will have to be demolished. Actually, you were lucky it didn’t collapse with you inside,” he tells a woman who is beginning to realize she will lose her exposed brick house.
One of the government’s representatives in the community explains her options: rebuilding, relocating to another part of the country, or buying a new home with public assistance. The woman listens in silence, trying to process the news.
Venezuela has been using a color-coded system since July to classify the condition of homes: green means a house is safe to occupy, yellow indicates partial damage, and red warns that the structure poses a risk to its occupants’ lives. Of the 7,000 homes assessed so far, 22% have been deemed collapsed and beyond repair. But Miyamoto cautions against focusing solely on that figure: “If you only watch the news, you’ll see only that percentage. But it’s not that everything is bad: most buildings did not collapse, or they can be repaired.”
The state of many buildings in La Guaira— melted, toppled like a house of cards, torn apart in seconds — has been the subject of technical debate and public controversy. How were these structures built if they proved so vulnerable? Were seismic regulations followed? “Soft soil plus high-rise buildings with no seismic design equals collapse,” says Miyamoto.
When asked if the codes were followed, he replies: “No. Any concrete structure built without seismic codes is dangerous. And that is exactly what happened here.”
Much of the destruction can be traced to a lack of oversight, Miyamoto says. “Inspection is not really mandatory, so the contractor does things their way, tries to skip details, cuts corners. And that’s when you see the defects.”
With entire housing complexes devastated, the twin earthquakes have also reignited criticism of the quality of public housing built under Chavismo, the ruling movement of former president Hugo Chávez. Thousands of homes erected in record time after the 1999 mudslides that devastated La Guaira were handed over as social housing, only to crumble during the recent quakes.
A satellite analysis published by The Washington Post in August found that in Caraballeda, the area hardest hit by the earthquake, more than half of the high-density apartment buildings constructed under Gran Misión Vivienda Venezuela, Hugo Chávez’s flagship public housing program, collapsed. By contrast, only about one in 10 comparable privately built buildings, erected under the same post-2001 seismic code, suffered the same fate. According to the Post analysis, nearly all of the private buildings that did collapse had been built before those regulations took effect, under older and less stringent standards.
Miyamoto is reluctant to say the problem was unique to the housing mission or that there were major differences between public and private construction, echoing a position previously advanced by Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodríguez when she was first questioned about the issue in July.
“Many expensive private apartments also collapsed,” says Miyamoto. “It’s practically equally bad in both public and private sectors. It really depends on the ground.”
The engineer insists that much of the debate over why one building collapsed while another remained standing overlooks a key technical factor: resonance between the frequency of the seismic waves and the structure itself. “I saw a lot of informal housing perform much better than modern construction, simply because its frequency didn’t match the ground motion,” he explains.
As hundreds of Venezuelans continue searching for loved ones beneath the rubble, 39 buildings have already been demolished.
When asked if the demolition effort is moving too fast for people still searching for their loved ones, Miyamoto replies: “I don’t think it’s too fast; it could even be faster. I think it’s very organized. If family members see any type of remains, the operation is halted. They have a special firefighting unit that arrives to ensure, respectfully, that remains are recovered.”
Of the three million tons of debris covered by the contract, whose value and terms have not been made public, roughly one million tons have already been cleared, according to Miyamoto. For now, the rubble is being stored at a temporary site, and local companies will be hired to process it.
He estimates that around 30% of the material can be recycled. “There is a concrete rubble recycling machine — not yet available here, but in Bogotá. You feed the material in, it separates the steel, separates the aggregate and produces sand,” he explains.
As for how he envisions La Guaira in 10 years, Miyamoto says: “It will depend on how people put money back into their own community, and not so much on the government.” Public authorities, he notes, typically account for only 5% to 10% of the built environment; the rest will have to come from private investment.
“But in 10 years, you won’t see the scars of this earthquake,” he adds. “There are places where homes won’t be able to be rebuilt, but La Guaira will be completely reconstructed.”
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