Right on top of each other.
Not a lot of aftershocks, but this is the bottom of the Caribbean Push and most likely ripped to those far small aftershocks.
The fault mechanism is pure strike-slip along that fault. An M7.5 should be 200 km long. The fact they are located right on top of each other shows sparse seismometer coverage.
The big earthquake you are thinking of is the 1967 Caracas earthquake, which struck on July 29, 1967, at 8:00 p.m. local time. While it occurred just before the 1970s, its catastrophic impact heavily shaped Venezuela's building codes and urban history heading into that decade.
That's the big one I remember that corrupted earthquake engineering for the next decades. That's because some damage was noted to be associated with building 'swing'. That started the whole 'response spectrum' thing, which has given Toronto soft-story condos. Blah
These earthquakes are bigger and assumed to be on the same fault. That gives a very short return time, and so the Caribbean is moving faster than some people thought (me).
You can see the straight line of this fault, so it is ripe for an 8 or 9. But not in any 'anxiety sense'. M 7's are big enough.
No steel and this area was already cleaned out by an earthquake. I think this will be a fine case of 'softening', or buildings softened by the previous earthquake, with nothing apparently wrong.
Don't expect any instrument recording, looks the same as the Phil earthquakes, about 20 cm/s.
This sort of thing is a good money-making anxiety machine. We've had a huge interval where I was so bored with no earthquakes, that I went to the climate-hype machine. blah. These are just random clusters, sometimes nothing, sometimes lots.
The Japan earthquake is nothing.
ps at least the Phil slabs held to pancakes. This was just Armenian Dust
I would hate that this is just 20 cm/s which is a crime, but I think it is.
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