Colombia’s Deadliest Earthquake Since 1979 Kills at Least 80, Three Days Into New Presidency

MANIZALES, COLOMBIA — A powerful 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck Colombia on Monday morning, August 10 — the country’s strongest since 1979, according to the director of Colombia’s Geological Service, Julio Fierro Morales — killing at least 80 people, injuring hundreds more, and prompting the government to declare a state of national disaster just three days into President Abelardo de la Espriella’s term.

What We Know

The earthquake struck at 7:34 a.m. local time, with its epicenter near the municipality of San José del Palmar in Chocó department, at a depth of approximately 96 kilometers, according to Colombia’s Geological Service and the U.S. Geological Survey.

The tremor lasted several minutes and was felt across a wide swath of the country — from Quibdó and Cali to Bogotá, Medellín, Manizales, Pereira, and Armenia — and reached as far as neighboring Ecuador and Panama. A Cali taxi driver, Jorge Moncayo, 64, told the Associated Press he watched columns of dust rise across the city from his hillside home as buildings collapsed: “My whole house shook... I’ve never experienced a tremor this strong.”

The Death Toll, City by City

The toll climbed steadily throughout the day, from an initial count near 20 in the late morning to at least 80 by evening, according to CNN’s tally based on official sources. The damage has been concentrated in five departments:

Risaralda (Pereira): 32 to 40 dead, per city officials — the single hardest-hit area.

Valle del Cauca (Cali and surrounding municipalities): 27 dead across at least 10 municipalities, according to Governor Dilian Francisca Toro; Cali’s mayor separately confirmed 4 deaths within the city itself, along with 16 collapsed structures and 7 damaged medical clinics.

Chocó: 9 dead and more than 80 injured, per Governor Nubia Carolina Córdoba

Caldas (Manizales): 2 to 3 dead, with 12 buildings partially or totally destroyed and 20 homes collapsed, according to Mayor Jorge Eduardo Rojas.

Antioquia: 1 death, a 73-year-old man in the municipality of Támesis killed by a falling rock dislodged by the tremor.

Notably, San José del Palmar — the earthquake’s actual epicenter — has reported no deaths, injuries, or trapped residents, according to its mayor. The damage instead concentrated in more distant, densely built cities, likely reflecting construction quality and population density rather than proximity to the quake’s source.

Widespread Structural & Infrastructure Damage

In Manizales, the city’s landmark Catedral Basílica sustained damage to one of its towers, and multiple buildings shed debris and facade material into the streets.

Pereira’s Matecaña International Airport suffered structural damage, contributing to Colombia’s Civil Aeronautics agency suspending flight operations at six airports altogether: Pereira, Manizales, Quibdó, Armenia, Cartago, and Buenaventura, pending safety inspections.

In Valle del Cauca, authorities began evacuating patients, medical staff, and visitors from Hospital Universitario del Valle amid structural concerns, with the department’s governor overseeing the process directly. Grid operator XM reported the earthquake knocked out enough infrastructure to leave 18% of national electricity demand unmet across eleven southwestern departments: Caldas, Caquetá, Cauca, Chocó, Huila, Nariño, Putumayo, Quindío, Risaralda, Tolima, and Valle.

Bogotá’s mayor, Carlos Fernando Galán, reported no serious structural damage in the capital, saying the city's emergency capabilities remained available to support harder-hit regions.

International & Domestic Rescue Efforts

The response has drawn support from across the hemisphere and beyond, arriving in waves as the scale of the disaster became clear. Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa offered one of the most concrete commitments, deploying a 47-member USAR (Urban Search and Rescue) team with specialized dogs and seven days of operational autonomy: “Colombia, Ecuador is with you,” he wrote on X.

El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele offered rescue teams, doctors, paramedics, and medical supplies, saying his government stood “ready to support immediately with whatever our Colombian brothers consider necessary.”

Chile’s José Antonio Kast pledged his government was “available to support whatever Colombia needs,” while Panama and Venezuela — both of which felt the quake themselves — also offered assistance. All three leaders’ governments are politically aligned with de la Espriella’s own administration, part of the broader rightward realignment across the region we've covered extensively this year.

Mexico’s response has been the most substantial single national commitment so far: Defense Secretary Ricardo Trevilla Trejo announced a prepared contingent of 255 specialized search-and-rescue military personnel, alongside tons of medicine, food, and equipment, organized under what Mexico is calling “Agrupamiento Cali” — a deployment structure explicitly modeled on the one Mexico used to support Venezuela after its own devastating earthquake in June.

The contingent remains on standby, awaiting a formal assistance request from Colombia’s government before deploying to Cali’s Alfonso Bonilla Aragón International Airport.

The United States announced $15.5 million in assistance directed toward emergency shelter, food, protection services, and damage assessment. The World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank both announced separate donations to support recovery efforts. The European Union activated its Copernicus satellite monitoring service to support rescue and relief operations, pledged funding channeled partly through the Red Cross, and activated its EU consular crisis-assistance mechanism to help affected EU citizens, according to EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres expressed formal solidarity with Colombia's government and people, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni both issued separate statements of condolence and support.

On the ground, Colombia’s own response has combined formal military coordination with spontaneous civilian action. President de la Espriella has directed the deployment of rescue teams via Colombian Army and Air Force aircraft from the Unified Command Post in Bogotá, activating four dedicated rescue groups in the earthquake’s immediate aftermath.

In Cali, residents — including paramedics acting outside their formal duties — joined professional rescuers digging through the rubble of a collapsed motel. In both Cali and Pereira, search teams continued working through the night using flashlights to search for survivors trapped in collapsed buildings, as additional specialized units continued arriving throughout Tuesday to reinforce local response capacity.

The Government’s Response

President de la Espriella, sworn in just three days earlier on August 7, relocated to Bogotá to personally direct the national response from a Unified Command Post established at the UNGRD Colombia’s disaster risk management agency.

“I am heading to Bogotá to focus on responding to the emergency our country is facing,” he wrote on X. “I have convened a Unified Command Post at the UNGRD, from which I will personally lead the response to communities in Chocó, the Eje Cafetero, and all affected areas.”

The de la Espriella government formally declared a national disaster, unlocking emergency funding and resources for the response, a move the Association of Colombian Capital Cities (Asocapitales) publicly thanked him for, noting it would “allow resources to be mobilized to mitigate the emergency throughout the territory.”

Colombia’s Army deployed its engineering corps to Quibdó, Cali, and the Eje Cafetero region to support search, rescue, and community assistance efforts.

An Unplanned Test, Days Into a New Presidency

The earthquake presents an immediate crisis for a government not yet a week old — one that had already spent its opening days on an aggressive first-term agenda, including the same-day transfer of 117 high-profile inmates to maximum-security prisons on inauguration day and the announcement of a $1 billion U.S. security assistance package.

How de la Espriella’s administration manages a natural disaster of this scale, layered atop an already ambitious security and foreign-policy rollout, is likely to shape early public perception of his presidency in ways no campaign promise anticipated.