Rescue workers search for thousands of people missing a day after 7.4 magnitude event hit west of country
Colombian rescue workers are racing to find survivors after the country’s deadliest earthquake this century killed at least 224 people and left at least 3,000 missing.
In Cali, one of the worst affected cities, firefighters said they had pulled a 35-year-old man from the wreckage of a collapsed building at shortly before 4am on Tuesday – nearly 24 hours after the 7.4 magnitude quake rattled western Colombia.
“We have found life under the debris … Every minute counts,” the fire department wrote on X alongside a video of a survivor being rescued from beneath a concrete beam.
Civilians reportedly pulled at least five survivors from a partially collapsed hotel in another part of town, although elsewhere the bodies of some of the city’s 85 confirmed victims could be seen lying on the street under sheets.
Colombia’s president, Abelardo de la Espriella, was sworn into power in Cali only last Friday. On Monday night he was back in his country’s third-largest city, telling reporters that 5,000 homes had been destroyed and 188 people were missing in the surrounding department of Valle del Cauca.
“We will get through this together,” Cali’s mayor, Alejandro Eder, assured its 2.3 million citizens during a televised meeting with the new president.
Eder said emergency responders had rescued 37 people from some of the 40 buildings that had completely collapsed in Cali. De la Espriella, who won power in June by vowing to launch a major crackdown on illegal armed groups, said more than 1,000 troops were being mobilised to avoid public disturbances amid reports of looting.
The situation in Pereira, a city 130 miles to Cali’s north, appears similarly dramatic, with at least 53 people reportedly trapped in some of the 58 constructions that collapsed. Eleven people are missing, according to the local newspaper El Diario.
On Monday, Pereira’s mayor, Mauricio Salazar, broke down in tears as he described the damage inflicted on his city, where at least 66 deaths have been confirmed.
“Pereira is living through a historic and tough situation,” Salazar told reporters, his voice breaking as he explained how local hospitals were struggling to keep up with the influx of patients.
The earthquake, which struck at 7.34am on Monday, is Colombia’s deadliest since a 6.2 magnitude temblor devastated parts of the same western coffee growing region in January 1999, killing more than 1,000 people.
The natural disaster poses an immediate and severe challenge to De la Espriella, a far-right populist with no experience of politics or governing who took office less than 72 hours before the earthquake.
The acting leaders of neighbouring Venezuela were castigated by civilians for what many considered their lethargic and incompetent initial response to the twin earthquakes that struck its north coast on 24 June, killing at least 6,300 people.
In the crucial 72 “golden hours” after Venezuela’s earthquakes, survivors said government officials and troops were nowhere to be seen, something widely attributed to years of economic crisis, corruption and the mismanagement of the armed forces, as well as foreign sanctions.
