READING, Pa. \u2013 Numbers on Monday night showed just how devastating the earthquake in Columbia has been. At least a 111 people were reported dead and 87 injured, while more than 1,600 buildings were damaged.<\/p>\n
For people with family in Colombia, the day has been full of fear.<\/p>\n
“It’s been one of the biggest ones in a few decades. So, yeah, it’s scary,\u201d said Berks County resident Jobany Bedoya.<\/p>\n
Bedoya had been checking his phone all day to hear updates from family.<\/p>\n
“It’s been every couple minutes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The hardest part is waiting to hear back.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey seemed to be doing OK,\u201d Bedoya said. \u201cJust shook up, obviously. It\u2019s very, very, serious.”<\/p>\n
Bedoya said he heard the news about the earthquake when he got to work.<\/p>\n
“I looked it up, and I was just blown away,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was very scary. Then kind of like check-in, panic mode kind of starts.”<\/p>\n
He said his cousin in Medellin, Columbia\u2019s second-largest city, had to leave her home suddenly.<\/p>\n
“She’s like, \u2018I didn’t even have a bag. I was in the shower, and all of a sudden, I hear these alarms on my phone.\u2019 And as soon as she got out, she threw on whatever she found, and they just ran out the building,” Bedoya said.<\/p>\n
Colombian residents say they could see the ground shaking.<\/p>\n
“When we go out to the building, the ground was still moving, so it was a long moment and really scary,” said Olguita Quintero.<\/p>\n
Bedoya said some of his friends had to evacuate their building twice.<\/p>\n
“The building was literally shaking. I talked to another friend who the building was swerving,\u201d he said. \u201cEveryone freaked out.”<\/p>\n
Bedoya said it’s difficult not to feel helpless.<\/p>\n
“It’s hard. It’s scary. It’s sad. You wish you could do more. You wish that you can be there, that maybe just provide some moral support,\u201d Bedoya said. \u201cBut at the end of the day, what can you really do?”<\/p>\n
Even with his family accounted for, Bedoya said he’ll continue check in with them as rescue efforts continue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. \u2013 Numbers on Monday night showed just how devastating the earthquake in Columbia has been. At…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263107,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[29817,50998,93855,19144,111120,98841,28,736,128,130,129,111121],"class_list":["post-263106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-colombia","tag-community-reaction","tag-earthquake","tag-evacuation","tag-family-safety","tag-panic","tag-pennsylvania","tag-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-rescue-crews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263106\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}