Rescuers worked through a third straight night with time ticking towards the 72-hour mark since a powerful earthquake hit Colombia. That’s the period aid agencies consider most critical for finding survivors alive, though it can stretch longer if trapped people have access to food and water.
“We’re entering the final phase,” Cali Mayor Alejandro Eder said, adding that survivors could still be found afterward but that the odds grow steadily worse. He said crews were still detecting signs of life beneath the rubble and urged speed: “Every minute is vital.”
The latest on the Colombia earthquake
The death toll from the quake has climbed to 265, President Abelardo de la Espriella said Wednesday.
De la Espriella said roughly 3,500 people have been injured and nearly 500 remain unaccounted for, though a crowdsourced tracking site used by families put the number of missing far higher, at more than 4,100. More than 25,800 families have been affected in total, he said.
The magnitude 7.4 quake — the strongest to hit Colombia in decades — struck on Monday morning near San Jose del Palmar in the northwestern Choco region. It tore through cities across western Colombia, with Cali and Pereira among the hardest hit, along with Manizales and Quibdo.
In Cali, volunteer rescuer Johana Sanchez described teams pausing every 30 minutes to listen for survivors. “So far, three people have been pulled out alive and three dead,” she told AFP.
Officials say 140 buildings collapsed entirely and thousands of homes were damaged or destroyed.
Families grapple with human toll
In Palmira, Santiago Lloreda told Reuters the quake killed his mother and his 13-month-old daughter, Salma, who was too young to have fingerprints on file and would need to be identified through DNA testing. He described his mother as the family’s caretaker, saying she “gave everything up to look after the baby.”
A man who only gave the news agency his first name, Ricardo, traveled from Miami to recover his sister’s body and said his niece was awaiting surgery for a fractured skull, jaw and leg, and a collapsed lung: “She’s alive. We know she’s going to get better.”
Thousands have been left homeless, with many sleeping outdoors in parks or emergency shelters set up in schools and sports arenas, either because their homes were destroyed or out of fear of aftershocks.
Colombia’s geological service has recorded 130 aftershocks since Monday’s quake.
International aid set to pour in
Response efforts have been especially difficult in Choco, the quake’s epicenter, a remote and impoverished region already strained by decades of conflict and displacement. Additionally, lost cell service has made it hard to assess damage in communities reachable only by river.
“This earthquake compounds an already severe humanitarian situation, and there is a need for increased support for the humanitarian response,” said Giovanni Rizzo, Colombia director for the Norwegian Refugee Council.
And UN resident coordinator María Jose Torres said in a statement Tuesday that aid groups already working in the region on an earlier peace effort were able to pivot quickly to disaster relief.
The United States has pledged more than $15 million and sent response teams. Mexico has sent military aircraft carrying nearly 20 tons of food along with security personnel, with more aid and rescue specialists on standby. El Salvador’s president offered two planes carrying 100 tons of supplies, and a search-and-rescue team from Mexico said it arrived directly from Venezuela, which faced its own major earthquakes in June.
Quake response provides test for new Colombian president
De la Espriella, inaugurated just three days before the earthquake struck, declared an economic emergency and three days of national mourning, and pledged to establish a fund to rebuild hospitals, schools, homes and infrastructure.
“This is undoubtedly a tragedy of immense proportions,” he said. “Our efforts are focused on those who remain missing.” He has not yet detailed what the economic emergency measures will involve.
Notably, de la Espriella won office on a platform of reduced public spending and a tougher security approach. Analyst Tiziano Breda, of the conflict-monitoring group ACLED, told Reuters that de la Espriella had campaigned in part on cutting funding to the country’s disaster-response agency — the same unit now leading the emergency effort.
Experts have cautioned that more seismic activity is possible, if not imminent. “Let’s remember that Colombia is full of active fault lines,” Rodrigo Leon Loya, a seismologist at the University of the Andes, told AP. “The question isn’t whether it can happen again. The question is rather when an earthquake of similar magnitude will occur at another of Colombia’s seismic sources,” he warned.
Edited by: Rob Turner
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