Rescue crews in western Colombia pushed into a third day of digging on Wednesday, working against the outer edge of the window in which trapped survivors can realistically be found alive. Two days after a magnitude-7.4 earthquake tore through the country's coffee belt and Pacific lowlands, casualty figures still won't sit still — official, unofficial, and local numbers keep pulling in different directions depending on who's doing the counting.
The toll depends entirely on the source
The nearest thing to an official national figure comes from the Asociación Colombiana de Ciudades Capitales, the nonprofit that coordinates Colombia's capital-city governments: 239 confirmed dead, 3,755 injured, and 243 buildings collapsed nationwide, in a count finalized Wednesday afternoon and still standing. City and departmental governments, added together by the wire service EFE and carried by El Tiempo, put the toll at 240. CNN's own running tally reached 224 on Tuesday, built from city and agency reports.
The missing-persons count splits the same way. Colombia's president told reporters Tuesday that roughly 195 people remained unaccounted for through official channels — while crowdsourced tracking platforms, where relatives post the names of people they can't reach, list a figure closer to 4,000. That civilian number almost certainly contains duplicate and unverified entries, but it captures how badly the disaster scrambled communication across the affected region.
The country's strongest quake in a century
Colombia's Geological Service has called Monday's quake the most powerful the country has recorded this centuryp. It struck at 7:34 a.m. local time, centered near San José del Palmar in Chocó — a rural community of roughly 4,800 people — at a depth of about 103 kilometers. Shaking reached Bogotá, Ecuador and Panama, and residents as far off as Venezuela reported feeling it too.
Collapsed buildings, a jail fire, and a hospital wing that gave way
Asocapitales' latest count puts collapsed structures at 243 nationwide, with Pereira (92), Armenia (69) and Cali (56) absorbing the worst of it, according to Infobae's breakdown of the association's consolidated report — a sharp climb from the roughly 60 buildings confirmed lost in the hours after the quake. Part of a Cali hospital was among the casualties: its pediatric and neonatal wings partially caved in and had to be evacuated, CNN and ABC News reported. Valle del Cauca Gov. Dilian Francisca Toro said her department recorded 27 deaths on its own, including three children, and four more people died when a fire broke out at a jail in Buenaventura amid the chaos.
Airports: a rolling reopening, tangled with an unrelated volcano
Seven regional airports lost commercial service within hours of the quake — Cali, Pereira, Manizales, Quibdó, Armenia, Cartago and Buenaventura — according to aid group NRC's situation report. Cali's Alfonso Bonilla Aragón terminal was first back online, resuming normal service Monday evening once power was restored. Five terminals were still closed for structural checks as of Tuesday morning — Pereira, Manizales, Armenia, Cartago and Buenaventura. By Wednesday, only three remained under restricted operations, per Asocapitales: Pereira's Matecaña, Cartago, and Popayán. That last closure has nothing to do with the earthquake at all — ash and gas emissions from the nearby Puracé volcano, which Colombia's geological service says is unrelated to the quake, forced Popayán's runway shut on its own timeline.
An unplanned first crisis for a five-day-old presidency
The disaster landed as an unscripted first test for President Abelardo de la Espriella, sworn in barely five days before the quake struck. He has since declared a national disaster, personally toured the hardest-hit coffee-region cities, and rolled out a three-month economic relief package for affected families, according to CNN. "You are not alone," he told the country in a video message shortly after the quake He formally signed the national-disaster decree Tuesday night, prioritizing Chocó, Valle del Cauca, Risaralda, Caldas and Quindío, the Latin Times reported.
Rescues continue as aftershocks keep coming
Crews in Cali pulled a baby and a survivor named Diana Troncoso from collapsed buildings Tuesday, and on Wednesday freed a 32-year-old woman, Daniela Largo, from the wreckage of a building in Pereira after 36 hours trapped — a rescue the president publicly celebrated. More than 70 aftershocks have hit the region since Monday, Colombia's Geological Service announced a number that could keep climbing for weeks or months as the ground around the rupture zone settles. A fresh tremor, magnitude 3.3 and centered near Los Santos in Santander, was felt overnight into Wednesday, per El Tiempo.
International aid pours in
Washington has pledged over $15 million in aid and sent in a disaster-response team, while Mexico's president has offered hundreds of search-and-medical personnel and equipment, NPR reported. El Salvador's Nayib Bukele is sending two cargo planes carrying 100 tons of supplies, with the first departing Tuesday night. The European Union activated its civil protection mechanism at Colombia's request and pledged €2 million toward the response, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said, according to Euronews. Pope Leo XIV sent an initial €100,000 in aid. Giovanni Rizzo, Colombia director for the Norwegian Refugee Council, said the disaster "compounds an already severe humanitarian situation" in a country still working through decades of internal displacement.
This is a sensitive, ongoing disaster story; casualty figures above reflect the most recent confirmed reporting available at time of writing and are likely to keep changing.
