Shocking footage from two professional baseball broadcasts shows players and coaches running out of their dugouts towards the outfield during the earthquakes in Venezuela.
The first of the two earthquakes occurred during an at-bat of a baseball game between Senadores de Caracas and Marineros de Carabobo. Video shows a batter asking the home plate umpire for a timeout after a 1-2 pitch in the top of the first inning. At that point, both the umpire and the catcher take off their masks. After a brief period of confusion, the broadcast switches to an overhead view showing players, coaches and spectators pouring onto the field as the game came to a halt.
The broadcast from at Estadio Universitario de Caracas then captured footage of the stadium shaking, with light posts around the ballpark and the stadium’s public address system swinging back and forth.
The earthquake, which registered 7.2 on the Richter scale, had an epicenter about 100 miles west of the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, where the baseball game was taking place. Thirty-nine seconds after the first earthquake hit, another one with a magnitude of 7.5 occurred.
Earthquakes also interrupted three other professional baseball game broadcasts
Meanwhile, as that was going on, another baseball game between Centauros de La Guaira and Líderes de Miranda was about to begin at Jose B. Perez Stadium when the first earthquake happened.
The quakes also brought two other Venezuelan League baseball games to a stop, one at Estadio Antonio Herrera Gutierrez and another at Forum La Guaira Stadium. Broadcasts from both games captured the violent shaking at each stadium.
Tremors from the quakes reached Brazil’s Amazon, over 1,000 miles away, causing damage to the country’s main airport. According to The Associated Press, the earthquakes in Venezuela killed 164 people, with that number expected to grow. Nearly 1,000 people have reported injuries, and thousands more have gone missing.