<\/p>\n
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) \u2014 A powerful 7.4 magnitude\u00a0earthquake\u00a0struck western\u00a0Colombia\u00a0on Monday, killing at least 111 people and damaging hundreds of buildings, President Abelardo de la Espriella said.<\/p>\n
The president declared an emergency, which will expedite funding for the quake recovery, and said he would visit the disaster zone, centered round the rural region of Choco.<\/p>\n
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP\u2019s earlier story follows below.<\/p>\n
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) \u2014 A powerful 7.4 magnitude\u00a0earthquake\u00a0struck western\u00a0Colombia\u00a0on Monday, killing at least 79 people, trapping residents under debris of collapsed buildings and forcing people to evacuate their homes as far as the capital of Bogot\u00e1.<\/p>\n
The epicenter was in San Jose Del Palmar, a community of about 4,800 people in the Choco region about 250 miles (400 kilometers) west of Bogota, the U.S. Geological Survey and Colombia\u2019s counterpart reported. The USGS said it struck at a depth of 66 miles (107 kilometers). The quake also was felt in neighboring Ecuador and Panama, though minimal damage was reported there.<\/p>\n
Local officials confirmed that at least 40 people were killed in the Risaralda region, where the hard-hit city of Pereira is located, and 27 people in the Valle del Cauca region, where Colombia’s third-biggest city, Cali, is located. At least three of those killed in Valle del Cauca were children, the governor said.<\/p>\n
Authorities also confirmed nine people were killed in Choco, two more in the Caldas region and a 73-year-old in the Antioquia region. Many more people across the country were injured.<\/p>\n
The quake left cities across the west of the country \u2014 Pereira, Quibdo, Cali and Manizales \u2014 ravaged. Residents and search teams picked through the rubble of collapsed buildings amid concerns by authorities of aftershocks. Colombia’s interior minister said more than 20 municipalities across the country had been hit.<\/p>\n
Colombia\u2019s Pacific region around the quake’s epicenter lies along the\u00a0\u201cRing of Fire\u201d, the 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 the poorest regions in the country. Nestled in the dense jungle, much of Choco is highly rural and only reachable by boat or plane, which may pose a problem for authorities in assessing the wider toll.<\/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.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy entire house shook. I’ve never lived through such a powerful earthquake,\u201d he said. \u201cWe’re thanking God we’re alive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Colombia’s Geological Service said Monday that it had been \u201cthe highest magnitude earthquake registered in Colombia in the last decade\u201d and that it had been followed by two 2.8 and 4.8 magnitude aftershocks. Authorities also reported that flights were suspended in the airports of Manizales, Quibdo, Armenia, Cartago, Buenaventura and Pereira.<\/p>\n
The earthquakes left many in the Andean nation unnerved after\u00a0two back-to-back quakes\u00a0devastated neighboring Venezuela in late June, destroyed hundreds of buildings and\u00a0killed more than 5,000\u00a0people. At the same time the quake brought down buildings in Colombia, desperate families in Venezuela continued to search the ruins for the bodies of their loved ones.<\/p>\n
In Pereira, photos and videos published by local media showed pieces of the airport ceiling falling down on travelers taking shelter and screaming, and people running through rubble in a panic.<\/p>\n
Pereira’s mayor, Mauricio Salazar, told a local radio station that at least 18 people had died and that many more were trapped under \u201ca massive quantity of collapsed buildings.\u201d<\/p>\n
In nearby Manizales, a city in the coffee-producing mountains of Colombia, one of the towers of the neo-Gothic cathedral collapsed and fell on the nave. Jorge Eduardo Rojas, the mayor of Manizales, asked residents to stay outside in case of aftershocks.<\/p>\n
Authorities in the rural state of Choco, the epicenter of the quake, reported injured people and damaged buildings in the capital, but provided few details.<\/p>\n
In Cali, a city of 2 million people, Mayor Alejandro Eder said that residents were trapped in at least 19 buildings that had collapsed.<\/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
Colombia\u2019s newly inaugurated\u00a0President Abelardo de la Espriella said Monday that he had personally taken charge of the government\u2019s response to the emergency in San Jos\u00e9 del Palmar following the earthquake.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are not alone. The state is present and taking action,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Response to the earthquake presents the first major challenge to de la Espriella, a Trump ally who was sworn in as president over the weekend.<\/p>\n
Messages of support rolled in from leaders across the Americas, including Mexico, Brazil, Ecuador, El Salvador and the United States.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Trump administration is closely monitoring the large earthquake that struck Colombia and stands ready to support the people of Colombia,\u201d U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote in a post on X.<\/p>\n
A number of countries offered aid, and the U.N. deputy spokesman, Farhan Haq, said \u201cwe stand ready to help as needed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) \u2014 A powerful 7.4 magnitude\u00a0earthquake\u00a0struck western\u00a0Colombia\u00a0on Monday, killing at least 111 people and damaging hundreds of buildings, President Abelardo de la Espriella said. The president declared an emergency, which will expedite funding for the quake recovery, and said he would visit the disaster zone, centered round the rural region of Choco. THIS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31261,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[4769,308,1317,9748,214,3059,2625],"class_list":["post-31260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jesus","tag-colombia","tag-hits","tag-killing","tag-magnitude","tag-people","tag-quake","tag-western"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31260\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}