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A 7.4-magnitude earthquake tore through western Colombia on Monday, killing more than 70 people and handing President Abelardo de la Espriella his first crisis three days after taking office.
A 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck western Colombia on Monday, killing more than 70 people across at least five cities and forcing newly sworn-in President Abelardo de la Espriella to suspend his itinerary to oversee rescue efforts. The quake hit at 7:34 a.m. local time near San José del Palmar in Chocó province, at a depth of 64 miles, with tremors felt as far as Venezuela.
"It's the strongest earthquake that has been recorded over the last decade in the country," said Julio Fierro, director of the Colombian Geological Survey. "From here we could see how the buildings fell," said Jimena Cangrejo, a Cali resident who lives on a hillside overlooking the city.
At least 20 buildings collapsed in Cali with people trapped, Mayor Alejandro Eder said, as he called on Bogotá and Medellín to send rescue crews. Five airports closed and canceled national and international flights, while Pereira's Matecaña International Airport terminal partially gave way. Pereira Mayor Mauricio Salazar put his city's toll at 18, Manizales Mayor Jorge Eduardo Rojas at two, and Chocó Governor Nubia Carolina Córdoba-Curi reported injuries and building damage in the provincial capital, Quibdó.
The disaster tests a conservative president who won office promising to crack down on armed groups, and comes less than seven weeks after twin magnitude-7.2 and 7.5 quakes in Venezuela killed more than 6,000 people. CNN modeling put the odds of the death toll surpassing 1,000 at roughly one in three, with an estimated 2 million people exposed to the most violent shaking and a tremor that reached roughly 34 million people across Colombia, Ecuador, Panama and Venezuela.
The quake's depth — 96 kilometers per Colombia's geological service, 107 per the USGS — likely limited the destruction, officials said. Colombia's disaster-response unit, UNGRD, first logged a magnitude-6.6 event at a shallower depth before revising the reading upward, a gap attributed to the normal lag in refining first estimates. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center ruled out any coastal threat by Monday afternoon.
The depth contrasts sharply with the region's deadlier precedent: a shallower magnitude-6.2 quake near Armenia in 1999 killed more than 1,000 people and gutted much of that coffee town. Officials said complete damage assessments were still being compiled Monday evening, with rescue teams working through rubble in Cali, Manizales and Pereira.
President de la Espriella, sworn in Friday, said in a video posted to social media that he had suspended his itinerary "to focus on the natural disaster battering the Colombian people," announcing an emergency command post to coordinate the response across affected departments. "You are not alone," he said.
Officials urged residents to stay alert for follow-on tremors that could further weaken cracked buildings. "We are concerned about aftershocks," Córdoba-Curi said. In Bogotá, Mayor Carlos Fernando Galán said cracking had appeared in some buildings but no major structural collapse had hit the capital, even as its roughly eight million residents streamed into the streets.
The economic toll is still taking shape. Insurance and reinsurance claims are expected to rise as damage assessments reach the coffee belt, while reconstruction contracts could flow to infrastructure and construction firms. Colombia's peso and sovereign bonds face short-term volatility as the government shifts spending toward disaster relief, though the direct market impact remains limited by the quake's depth and the absence of a tsunami threat.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
