A magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck western Colombia on Monday morning, killing at least 20 people, collapsing more than a dozen buildings across several cities, and leaving residents trapped beneath rubble as emergency teams launched rescue operations.
The quake hit at 7.34 am local time (12.34 GMT), with its epicentre near San José del Palmar, a small municipality of roughly 4,700 people in the northwestern department of Chocó, according to the United States Geological Survey. The tremor was felt across much of the country and in neighbouring Venezuela.
The heaviest tolls were reported in two cities in the country’s centre-west. Pereira, the capital of Risaralda department, recorded most of the confirmed deaths alongside widespread structural damage.
“So far we have recorded 18 people dead, unfortunately, and in the city a very high number of collapsed buildings,” Pereira Mayor Mauricio Salazar told Caracol Radio.
Two additional deaths were reported in Manizales, in Caldas department, where officials counted 12 buildings partially or fully destroyed and 20 collapsed homes. In Cali, in the southwestern Valle del Cauca department, authorities reported 19 collapsed structures with people trapped inside and appealed for additional rescue crews.
Officials in Chocó said the departmental capital, Quibdó, sustained injuries and serious damage to buildings, though exact figures were not immediately available.
The country’s civil aeronautics agency said six airports had suspended operations after sustaining damage. The affected facilities serve Pereira, Manizales, Quibdó, Armenia, Cartago and Buenaventura, the agency stated on X, disrupting a key transport corridor across western Colombia.
Earthquakes of this magnitude are relatively rare in the region and carry significant destructive potential, particularly for older masonry construction. Rescue teams and residents were seen digging through debris in Cali and other cities in search of survivors.
The disaster echoes other recent seismic emergencies across the Pacific and Asia, including a deep tremor that rattled southern Indonesia, underscoring the challenges facing densely populated cities built along active fault zones.
The economic ripple was immediate, with Colombian stocks falling in the aftermath as investors weighed the potential cost of reconstruction and business disruption in the affected regions.
Emergency crews were still assessing the full scale of the impact as darkness fell, and the death toll was expected to rise. Authorities urged residents in damaged areas to avoid weakened structures amid the risk of aftershocks.