From the U.K. Daily Mail,
Venezuela earthquake rescuers discover collapsed buildings were ‘held up by STYROFOAM’ as catastrophic death toll reaches 1,430.
Styrofoam. Not concrete. The Daily Mail reports,
In the video, a man can be seen recording himself pulling away pieces of what appears to be collapsed walls with just his hand. The outside of the wall has a thin layer of concrete, while the inside is clearly Styrofoam or a similar material.
‘Look at this sh**,’ the man recording can be heard saying in Spanish as he pulls away chunks of Styrofoam and digs his finger into the material without resistance.
‘No wonder everything crumbled like cardboard,’ he later said before he and a fellow rescuer could be heard criticizing the government for the shoddy construction.
We are always told that it’s the greedy capitalists who cut corners and skimp on safety. But when greedy socialists do it, who is there to notice?
Wednesday’s double-earthquake leveled entire neighborhoods and blocks of buildings, many of which were constructed as part of socialist revolutionary president Hugo Chavez’s ‘grand housing mission.’
The program came in response to previous natural disasters that killed and displaced tens of thousands of people in 1999, the first year of Chavez’s tenure.
The cycle repeats. The tragedy reminds me of comedy. There is an old Monty Python TV sketch, where “the Amazing Mystico,” assisted by “Janet,” construct public housing towers entirely through hypnosis. In the sketch, the ruse works, as long as the inhabitants believe that the buildings exist.
Unlike Mystico’s council flats, the handiwork of Chavez/Maduro was no match for a major earthquake.
