OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
12:30 PM – Monday, August 10, 2026
A powerful 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck western Colombia on Monday, trapping residents under rubble and causing severe structural damage across multiple departments.
The official death toll has reached at least 111, with another 87 people injured.
According to the Colombian Geological Service and the U.S. Geological Survey, the temblor struck shortly after 7:30 a.m. local time near San José del Palmar, a rural community in the Chocó region approximately 250 miles west of Bogotá, at a depth of roughly 66 miles.
Occurring along the seismically active Pacific Ring of Fire, the disaster marks the strongest earthquake recorded in Colombia in over a decade.
The earthquake heavily impacted urban and rural areas throughout Colombia’s western interior. In Risaralda department, at least 40 fatalities were confirmed, including victims at Matecaña International Airport in Pereira, where a section of the passenger terminal roof caved in.
Just in Valle del Cauca, where at least 27 deaths were reported, Cali Mayor Alejandro Eder confirmed that around 20 buildings collapsed, leaving people trapped inside. Further east in Caldas, one of the main towers of the historic neo-Gothic Metropolitan Cathedral Basilica in Manizales also collapsed onto the nave, while municipal authorities reported widespread gas leaks.
Meanwhile, Chocó Governor Nubia Carolina Córdoba-Curi reported casualties and severe building damage in Quibdó, emphasizing that emergency access remains “challenging in the remote, jungle-covered region.”
Tremors were felt as far away as Bogotá, where thousands evacuated high-rise buildings, as well as in neighboring Panama and Ecuador.
Additioanlly, Colombia’s civil aviation authority suspended operations across six regional airports — including Pereira, Manizales, Quibdó, Armenia, Cartago, and Buenaventura — to assess structural integrity and clear debris.
Ground search-and-rescue teams, accompanied by local residents, continued to comb through collapsed concrete and masonry amid fear of further secondary collapses caused by aftershocks, which included temblors measuring up to 5.0 magnitude.
Analysts say that the catastrophe presents a major challenge for newly inaugurated Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella, who declared a state of emergency to expedite recovery funding and established a unified command post in San José del Palmar.
Notably, international offers of assistance were quickly issued, including statements from U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the United Nations (UN) confirming readiness to deploy aid.
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