The former Dunedin resident’s home town of Barquisimeto is only about 40km from the epicentre, near San Felipe.
Several desperate phone calls later, the 37-year-old learnt her family was safe and uninjured.
‘‘I’m feeling extremely lucky, especially for those of my family that lived in the capital [Caracas].
‘‘My cousin said the building across the road from her building collapsed.
‘‘It’s horrifying. It’s so distressing with the reports that there might be 100,000 people dead.
‘‘Even if my immediate family is not hurt physically, we are very hurt emotionally because there’s a lot of people that have died.’’
Then came her second fear — the fear of what will happen to her country in the coming weeks and months.
She said while the death toll of those killed in collapsed buildings had not yet been determined, she believed the level of corruption and lack of resources in Venezuela meant those who were injured were also likely to die.
‘‘Because of these corruption levels, our hospitals are severely underfunded.
‘‘Our rescue teams ... are literally using pickaxes and their hands in the rubble because they have no resources.
‘‘That’s why I’m so worried about the people that are still trapped.
‘‘They’re trying their best, but if they don’t have the resources, how fast can they actually get the people out?
‘‘[The injured are] more likely to die of infection rather than survive, because they will go to a hospital where there may be a bed, but there’s nothing else — there’s no gauze, there’s no antibiotics, there’s nothing.’’
The death toll was likely to skyrocket as a result, and the devastation would continue long into the future, she said.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife were removed from power during a United States military operation in Caracas earlier this year.
They were extradited to the US to face federal narco-terrorism and drug trafficking charges.
People from the Maduro regime had been left in charge and any aid or money for rebuilding would disappear.
‘‘These people, they just fill their pockets,’’ Mrs Ruiz Halkett said.
‘‘We had an earthquake in Venezuela about 35 years ago that was so bad that city has still not been rebuilt.
‘‘That’s why there’s so much damage.
‘‘There is no money to maintain anything - because they pocket that money.’’
She was worried about the future of her country.
‘‘The corruption is so bad there, I have no faith that it will be able to recover or be rebuilt quickly - if ever.’’
Mrs Ruiz Halkett came to New Zealand in 2014, after meeting her future husband online.
