Fitful but sustained rupture of the 2026 Mw 7.6 Venezuela earthquake

Jeremy wing ching wong , Eitan Rapaport Bruck, Rubi Garcia Gonzalez, Mathilde Marchandon, Baoning Wu, Fabian Kutschera , Molly Zebker, Yohai Magen , Wenyuan Fan, Yuri Fialko , Alice-Agnes Gabriel

The devastating 2026 Venezuela earthquake was cataloged as a doublet of \Mw~7.2 and 7.5 events.
Combining NISAR and ALOS-2 Synthetic Aperture Radar data, teleseismic source imaging, and ensemble Kalman inversion of multiple moment tensors and dynamic rupture simulations, we show that the 2026 Venezuela earthquake was instead a single \Mw~7.6 event with variable rupture speed and seismic moment release.
The earthquake rupture went through episodes of acceleration and deceleration, including a pronounced slow-down around the rupture area of the 1967 \Mw~6.6 Caracas earthquake. Stress transfer from the partially arrested front and a trailing slip pulse enabled the rupture to break through this stress barrier and release ~26% of the seismic moment
beneath the coastal cities of Playa Grande and Caraballeda, where damage was most severe.
Such fitful ruptures enhance high-frequency seismic radiation and challenge conventional methods for characterization of large earthquakes.