The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Seis­mic Re­search Cen­tre has con­firmed that the coastal up­lift that tore through the Gal­fa coast­line in Ce­dros last week was a re­sult of the two dead­ly twin earth­quakes that rocked Venezuela’s north­ern coast.

The 7.2 and 7.5 earth­quakes that rav­aged the South Amer­i­can coun­try have led to over two thou­sand deaths, leav­ing thou­sands home­less and sev­er­al more miss­ing as res­cue ef­forts con­tin­ue. The hard­est-hit La Guaira State in Venezuela sits rough­ly 300 miles from Trinidad’s south­west­ern coast­line. But last week, short­ly af­ter the quakes oc­curred, Ce­dros res­i­dents found the coast­line dra­mat­i­cal­ly shift­ed.

Ge­ol­o­gist Xavier Moo­nan ini­tial­ly es­ti­mat­ed that the coast had been lift­ed as much as 20 feet high­er near in­stan­ta­neous­ly in the af­ter­math.