Colombia

A powerful 7.4-magnitude earthquake tore through western Colombia early Monday morning, killing more than 160 people, collapsing dozens of buildings, and leaving hundreds still missing — the strongest quake to strike the country in more than two decades and an immediate, defining crisis for a president who had been sworn into office only days earlier. What Happened The earthquake struck near San José del Palmar on Colombia’s Pacific coast shortly after 7:30 a.m. local time Monday, with a depth of roughly 103 kilometers. Colombia’s Geological Service confirmed it as the strongest quake to hit the country so far this century, and it was followed by multiple aftershocks. The tremor was powerful enough to be felt across the border in neighboring Ecuador and Panama. By Monday evening, officials with the Colombian Association of Capital Cities put the death toll at 132, with 570 people reported injured — figures authorities warned were likely to keep climbing as search and rescue operations continued. By Tuesday morning, NBC News reported the confirmed death toll had risen further, to at least 169. The hardest-hit areas were concentrated in the Risaralda region, home to the city of Pereira, where at least 60 deaths were reported, and the Valle del Cauca region, home to Colombia’s third-largest city, Cali, where at least 27 people died, including three children. Widespread Destruction Across Multiple Cities The quake caused damage across a wide swath of western Colombia, hitting Cali, Pereira, Quibdó, and Manizales in particular. Local officials reported that at least 86 buildings had fully collapsed and hundreds more were damaged, with President Abelardo de la Espriella saying the quake destroyed or seriously damaged more than 1,500 homes, along with more than a dozen health centers and numerous schools. Seven airports across the affected region suspended operations in the quake’s immediate aftermath, and five capital cities were placed under a red alert. In Cali, city officials said at least 188 people remained missing as of Monday evening. Eyewitnesses described scenes of chaos and destruction. Jorge Moncayo, a 64-year-old taxi driver in the city, told the Associated Press he watched plumes of dust shoot into the air as buildings came down around him. Juan Carlos Osorio, who helped dig through rubble at a collapsed structure, told Colombian broadcaster Caracol Television that the sound of the building coming down “sounded like a bomb.” Neighbors organized themselves into human chains to help move debris by hand while waiting for heavier equipment to arrive. Álvaro López, a Cali resident who watched search efforts unfold while holding his dog, described the scope of the damage bluntly: “Our building has basically been left in ruins, and the building next to ours? Completely collapsed.” In Pereira, rescue crews evacuated 16 people who had been trapped for six hours inside a cable car system used for public transit in the mountainous city. A Region Especially Vulnerable The earthquake’s epicenter fell near Colombia’s Chocó region, one of the country’s poorest and most remote areas, nestled deep in Pacific coastal jungle and reachable in many parts only by boat or small aircraft. That remoteness has significantly complicated damage assessment and relief efforts, with communications outages in the hours after the quake leaving some areas without any mobile phone service and delaying an accurate accounting of the toll from the region closest to where the quake actually struck. Colombia sits along the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” the extensive chain of seismic fault lines encircling the Pacific Ocean responsible for the majority of the world’s earthquakes, making the country and its neighbors chronically vulnerable to major seismic events. Colombian officials noted that the country has taken concrete steps to prepare for exactly this kind of disaster since a devastating 1999 earthquake, including instituting evacuation drills conducted at least twice annually in major cities such as Bogotá, Medellín, Barranquilla, and Cali. An Unwelcome Echo of Venezuela’s Recent Disaster For many in the region, Monday’s earthquake carried an especially painful resonance: memories remain fresh of the devastating twin earthquakes that struck neighboring Venezuela in June, which together killed more than 6,000 people and left thousands more displaced, with recovery efforts there still ongoing more than a month later. NPR noted that residents and rescue workers searching through rubble in Cali described scenes strikingly similar to those still playing out across the border in Venezuela. A Test for a Brand-New President The timing of the disaster carries particular political weight in Colombia. The earthquake struck just days after Abelardo de la Espriella was sworn in as the country’s new president, thrusting his administration into a major national crisis before it had barely begun. De la Espriella declared a national state of emergency Monday afternoon, pledging the full resources of the federal government toward rescue and relief efforts. “The national government has all of its capabilities deployed to protect lives, assist affected communities and deliver aid wherever it is needed,” he said in a national address. “The first priority is rescuing the people trapped under the rubble.” International Response The United States moved quickly to offer support. The State Department announced it is committing $15.5 million to Colombia specifically for shelter, food, protection services, and ongoing earthquake damage assessments. The U.S. Embassy in Bogotá also confirmed it is actively assisting American citizens affected by the disaster — a notable point given that hundreds of thousands of Americans visit Colombia annually, making the U.S. the largest single source of tourists to the country. What Comes Next With search and rescue operations still actively underway in hard-hit cities and communications still limited in some of the more remote areas near the epicenter, officials caution that the full scope of the disaster — both in terms of lives lost and total economic damage — likely won’t be clear for days or even weeks. For a president barely into his first week in office, the response to this disaster is likely to shape public perception of his administration’s competence and priorities well beyond the immediate crisis itself, as reconstruction in…