The Ground Shakes on Day Four
Four days after taking office, Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella declared a national disaster on Monday and put himself in charge of the country's emergency response after a magnitude-7.4 earthquake ripped through Colombia's Pacific and Andean regions. The quake hit at 7:34 a.m. local time Monday, Aug. 10, centered near the town of San José del Palmar in the western department of Chocó — a finding confirmed by both Colombia's national geological service and the U.S. Geological Survey. Tremors reached Bogotá, Cali, Medellín, Manizales and Pereira, and were felt across the border in Ecuador and Panama.
De la Espriella — sworn in this past Friday, Aug. 7, in an unprecedented ceremony held in Cali rather than Bogotá, after Congress approved the move by wide margins — scrapped his cabinet's planned Aug. 12–13 trip to La Guajira and redirected the government's full attention to the disaster zone. He set up a Unified Command Post, first at the national disaster agency's Bogotá headquarters and later expanded with satellite posts in Cali, Armenia and Quibdó, invoking Colombia's 2012 disaster-management law to unlock emergency funding. "You are not alone. The state is present and acting," he wrote on X, translated from Spanish.
Death Toll Climbs Through the Night
The casualty count moved quickly. Colombian authorities reported 254 dead by Tuesday afternoon. Rescue officials caution the number will keep moving as search teams reach parts of Chocó, Valle del Cauca, Risaralda, Caldas and Antioquia that remain difficult to access. Nationally, Monday's command-post briefings tallied 1,575 damaged homes, 37 destroyed outright, 61 collapsed buildings, 52 damaged schools, 18 damaged health centers and 18 impassable roads — figures officials expect to keep climbing as assessments continue.
Cali's own toll rose sharply overnight: an initial count Monday evening put the city at 95 dead and least 380 injured, but by Tuesday afternoon. Vice President José Manuel Restrepo led a parallel command post in Manizales, where he later confirmed roughly $1.2 million in combined emergency financing from the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and Latin America's CAF development bank.
Cali Locks Down Over Looting Fears
Cali, Colombia's third-largest city and the site of De la Espriella's own inauguration days earlier, became the emergency's flashpoint. Mayor Alejandro Eder ordered a curfew from 8 p.m. Monday to 6 a.m. Tuesday and deployed extra police and army units, concentrated in the hard-hit comunas 17 and 19. "We have threats of looting; that's why I ordered the curfew and the militarization of Cali," Eder said, in a statement translated from Spanish and carried widely across Colombian and regional outlets. Rescue workers, medics, journalists and public transit were exempted. The city also declared a local state of calamity and postponed the 30th edition of the Petronio Álvarez Pacific music festival, which had been set to open Aug. 12.
Washington Moves Fast to Back the New Government
The earthquake became an early test of the U.S.-Colombia relationship under the new administration. The State Department announced $15.5 million in emergency funding for shelter, food and damage assessments within hours of the quake. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on X that Washington "stands ready to support the people of Colombia" and De la Espriella's government. Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno, who was born in Bogotá, also publicly praised the government's response. The swift pledge follows Washington's earlier announcement, days before the quake, of roughly $1 billion in planned security assistance to the new government — a sign of how quickly the Trump administration has moved to back De la Espriella, a political ally, compared with its more contentious relationship with Petro. For Colombian communities in Florida, Texas and elsewhere hoping to funnel aid home, the fast federal response suggests Washington intends to route relief through the fledgling government rather than around it, even as questions remain about how efficiently that aid reaches quake-hit rural areas like Chocó.
Old Rivalries Resurface Even in a National Emergency
The disaster hasn't paused Colombia's bitter transition dispute. Colombia's Foreign Ministry, led by Omar Bulla Escobar, accused unnamed former officials of the outgoing Petro government of working to discredit the new administration before international bodies even as it organized humanitarian relief, saying the effort sought to undermine "the decision of the Colombian people." Petro himself has not recognized De la Espriella's mandate, having alleged — without providing evidence — that the runoff was manipulated through foreign-run algorithms; he skipped his own farewell address to Congress and was absent from Friday's inauguration. That runoff, held June 21, was Colombia's tightest presidential contest in decades: De la Espriella's certified margin over leftist senator Iván Cepeda came in at well under a single percentage point.
Analysts point to lingering public anger over a 2024 corruption scandal inside Colombia's disaster-response agency under Petro, which could shape how the new government's handling of this crisis is judged politically. For now, De la Espriella has called for unity "without ideological or political distinctions," even as his government works to shelve, at least temporarily, its promised security crackdown to focus on rescue and reconstruction. How long that pause lasts may depend on how the death toll and the recovery effort evolve in the coming days — and whether Bogotá's political rivalries stay dormant that long.
