Surface rupture of the Cariaco July 09, 1997 earthquake on the El Pilar fault, northeastern Venezuela

From many locals' accounts, the rupture seems to have propagated from Pantoño to the west (highly asymmetric bidirectionality). This suggests that earthquake nucleation happened at or near the Casanay-Guarapiche restraining bend and rupture quickly propagated westward, allowing only a small fraction to progress eastwards beyond the bend. Additionally, the large fraction of after-slip (or creep) released is to be related to such restraining bend, which seems to have partly locked slip during rupture.