On Tuesday, Venezuela and several nearby countries felt the effects of a massive earthquake rated 7.3 on the Richter scale, the likes of which has not been seen there since 1900.

The ground shook for about a minute, and people were evacuated from buildings all around the region, from office buildings to hospitals full of child cancer patients.

The earthquake struck about 12 miles from the Cariaco Peninsula in Venezuela, but even Grenada and Trinidad and Tobago felt its effects.

However, the most remarkable part about this earthquake is the amount of damage it didn’t cause. Back in 1997, an earthquake of 6.9 magnitude struck the same region and caused about 80 casualties and mass destruction. In contrast, there have been no fatalities reported due to this earthquake. The most damage that has been caused is to vehicles, supermarket shelves falling over, some power outages and some structural damage to buildings.

According to scientists, the reason this earthquake caused much less damage than it could have was due to its depth. The actual quake occurred at a much lower depth underground, which lessened the strength of the aftershocks and its effect on the surface.

Regardless, over 20,000 people from Venezuela’s Civil Protection and Disaster agency have been deployed to oversee damage control and to help both the people and the country recover.