New York|‘A Heavy Heart’: Venezuelans in New York Confront Tragedy Back Home

Rosmarily Aponte was in New York City on a video call with her sister in Venezuela when the earthquakes hit.

Ms. Aponte, 48, watched in horror as household items crashed to the floor of her sister’s apartment.

“I told her: ‘Get out! Get out of there!’” she said in an interview conducted in Spanish.

Her sister, Rosmary Aponte, 50, who lives in Maracay, a city west of Caracas, fled her 14th floor apartment. But as she raced down the stairs, the call dropped.

The back-to-back earthquakes that struck Venezuela on Wednesday left at least 920 people dead and injured 3,360, according to Venezuela’s government. Thousands of people are now homeless, and an unknown number are missing.

In the New York City metro area, where the population of Venezuelan immigrants has grown rapidly in recent years as the country fell into chaos, news of the devastating earthquakes caused shock and desperation as people tried again and again by text messages or phone calls to reach relatives and friends who live there.

Ms. Aponte, who worked as a bank manager in Venezuela and is now a manager at Perros y Vainas, a Venezuelan street food stand in Greeley Square, in Manhattan, cried as she waited for hours for news about her sister. It turned out that she had made it to safety and was OK, but her building was not. She and other residents weren’t allowed back inside.