{"id":429539,"date":"2026-08-11T06:30:30","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T06:30:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/429539\/"},"modified":"2026-08-11T06:30:30","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T06:30:30","slug":"deadly-earthquake-shakes-western-colombia-nbc-6-south-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/429539\/","title":{"rendered":"Deadly earthquake shakes western Colombia \u2013 NBC 6 South Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"

A powerful 7.4 magnitude\u00a0earthquake<\/a>\u00a0struck western\u00a0Colombia\u00a0on Monday, killing at least 111 people, damaging hundreds of buildings and leaving many trapped under debris while their loved ones and rescue workers searched through rubble.<\/p>\n

Search teams and civilians picked through the remains of destroyed buildings in the country\u2019s third-largest city, Cali, passing large pieces of concrete and other rubble down a long line of volunteers.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur building has basically been left in ruins, and the building next to ours? Completely collapsed,\u201d said \u00c1lvaro L\u00f3pez, who cradled his dog as he watched the search. The desperate scene recalled the\u00a0searches still ongoing in neighboring Venezuela<\/a>\u00a0weeks after that country was devastated by two powerful earthquakes.<\/p>\n

Besides Cali, the quake ravaged cities across western Colombia, including Pereira, Quibdo and Manizales, and was felt in neighboring Ecuador and Panama. The epicenter was in San Jose del Palmar, a community of about 4,800 people in the Choco region about 250 miles west of Bogota, the U.S. Geological Survey said.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThe quake also was felt in neighboring Ecuador and Panama, though minimal damage was reported there. Kris Sanchez repoorts.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Colombia\u2019s President Abelardo de la Espriella said at least 87 people were injured and around 1,600 buildings were damaged, including at least 61 that completely collapsed. He declared an emergency to expedite funding for the quake recovery.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe aren\u2019t going to leave people alone. They are in our hearts and we are going to tend to people with our full determination,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Most powerful quake recorded in Colombia this century<\/p>\n

Colombia\u2019s Geological Service said Monday’s quake was the country’s strongest recorded \u201cin the 21st century,\u201d and that it was followed by several aftershocks.<\/p>\n

Colombia\u2019s Pacific region around the epicenter lies along the\u00a0\u201cRing of Fire,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0the line of seismic faults encircling the Pacific Ocean where most of the world\u2019s earthquakes occur. The Pacific, particularly the Choco region, is one of Colombia’s poorest, nestled in dense jungle. Much of Choco is only reachable by boat or plane, which may pose difficulty in assessing the wider toll.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tHere’s what you need to know about the scales used to measure the magnitude and intensity of earthquakes.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Local authorities said the death toll included at least 40 people who were killed in the Risaralda region, where Pereira is located, and 27 people in the Valle del Cauca region, where Cali is located, including three children. Authorities also confirmed nine people killed in Choco, two in the Caldas region and a 73-year-old in the Antioquia region. It was not immediately clear where the other 32 people died.<\/p>\n

The earthquakes left many in the Andean nation unnerved after\u00a0two back-to-back quakes<\/a>\u00a0devastated neighboring Venezuela in late June, destroying hundreds of buildings and\u00a0killing more than 6,300 people<\/a>.<\/p>\n

By Monday afternoon, people had begun reporting their\u00a0loved ones missing<\/a>\u00a0on digital databases just as civilians did following Venezuela’s earthquakes. One database had more than 2,000 people, mostly in Cali and Pereira, with the number steadily climbing.<\/p>\n

Photos of the missing included a young mother and her baby in Pereira; another showed an 80-year-old woman in Cali whose family was desperately looking for details after her building collapsed.<\/p>\n

Cities left devastated<\/p>\n

Jorge Moncayo, a 64-year-old taxi driver in Cali, said he saw plumes of dust shoot up across the city as buildings collapsed. Residents and rescue workers were searching the rubble for survivors. The local government said that people remained trapped in a number of the city’s 380 damaged buildings.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy entire house shook. I\u2019ve never lived through such a powerful earthquake,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re thanking God we\u2019re alive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCan we really predict earthquakes? Two top seismologists explain why it\u2019s so hard and what we can actually do to stay prepared.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Little was known about the extent of the damage in Choco, a remote region where officials reported dozens of injured people and damaged buildings but few other details. Phone signals were out in many parts of the region’s capital, Quibdo. The town closest to the earthquake\u2019s epicenter, San Jose del Palmar, has no airport, and is located on top of a mountain ridge along a highway linking the cities of Cali and Pereira.<\/p>\n

In Pereira, further south in the coffee-producing mountains of Colombia, photos and videos on local media showed pieces of the airport ceiling falling onto travelers taking shelter and screaming. People ran through rubble and plumes of dust, and residents said collapsed stores, residential buildings and homes lined the city. Pereira Mayor Mauricio Salazar told a local radio station there were at least 15 collapsed buildings where people were feared trapped.<\/p>\n

In nearby Manizales, one of the towers of the neo-Gothic cathedral collapsed and fell on the nave. Mayor Jorge Eduardo Rojas asked residents to stay outside in case of aftershocks. Authorities said flights were suspended in the airports of Manizales, Quibdo, Armenia, Cartago, Buenaventura and Pereira as they assessed damage.<\/p>\n

Offers of aid from across the Americas<\/p>\n

Small earthquakes, known as \u201ctemblores,\u201d are common in central and western Colombia, but those above 6.0 magnitude are rare. In 1999, a 6.2 magnitude quake near the city of Armenia killed more than 1,100 people.<\/p>\n

Response to the earthquake presents the first major challenge for de la Espriella, a Donald Trump<\/a> ally who was\u00a0sworn in as president over<\/a>\u00a0the weekend. A divisive figure because of his pledge of an all-out crackdown on criminal groups, de la Espriella said he had personally taken charge of the government\u2019s response to the emergency.<\/p>\n

On Monday night, the U.S. State Department announced it would provide $15.5 million for emergency shelter, food and other earthquake response aid. Governments across Latin America also lined up to help.<\/p>\n

El Salvador\u2019s President Nayib Bukele and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum \u2014 whose countries were among the largest providers of aid to Venezuela following its recent crisis \u2014 said they were ready to assist Colombia.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom El Salvador, we are in communication and ready to provide immediate support with our rescue teams, medical personnel, paramedics, supplies, or any other assistance that our Colombian brothers and sisters deem necessary,\u201d Bukele said.<\/p>\n

Chilean President Jos\u00e9 Antonio Kast said Chile, one of the region\u2019s most earthquake-prone countries, \u201cknows the pain and the challenge left by earthquakes\u201d and pledged help.<\/p>\n

Associated Press journalists Manuel Rueda in Bogot\u00e1, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A powerful 7.4 magnitude\u00a0earthquake\u00a0struck western\u00a0Colombia\u00a0on Monday, killing at least 111 people, damaging hundreds of buildings and leaving many…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429540,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[3934,88,90,89],"class_list":["post-429539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-earthquakes","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}