Rescuers in Colombia are making last-ditch efforts to pull survivors from the rubble of a magnitude 7.4 earthquake as the critical 72-hour window expires, with at least 273 dead and thousands still missing.
Emergency crews in Cali and Pereira worked through a third straight night Wednesday, using bare hands, cranes, sniffer dogs, and vibration-detection equipment to reach people trapped beneath collapsed buildings. By Thursday morning, the clock had run out on the 72-hour period when survivors are considered most likely to be found alive. Cali Mayor Alejandro Eder said Wednesday that operations were "entering the final phase."
The quake, described as the strongest to hit Colombia this century, struck western Colombia on the morning of August 10, 2026, and has killed at least 273 people, injured more than 3,800, and left nearly 400 officially missing. Civilian-run databases, however, put the number of unaccounted-for people above 4,100, a gap that officials have not publicly explained.
More than 12,500 dwellings have been destroyed. At least 172 buildings collapsed entirely. Nearly 26,000 families have been affected, and the country's new president, Abelardo de la Espriella, declared the disaster an "economic emergency" and announced three days of national mourning.
In Pereira, crews focused on a collapsed bakery where a street vendor named Pablo Loaiza has been trapped since Monday. His relatives said he appeared to respond when rescuers asked him to knock twice, then three times, from beneath the rubble. His 16-year-old niece, Sara Loaiza, stood near the site.
Volunteer rescuer Johana Sanchez told AFP how crews enforce total silence at regular intervals to detect survivors:
"Every half hour we make everyone be quiet to see if we can find people alive. So far, three people have been pulled out alive and three dead."
Sara Loaiza, waiting for word on her uncle, captured the agony of the families gathered at the scene:
"They tell us it could be him. My heart is about to burst out of my chest."
Whether Pablo Loaiza has been confirmed alive or extracted from the rubble remains unclear. The initial earthquake killed more than 110 people in its first hours and the toll has climbed steadily since.
Cali, Colombia's third-largest city, has borne some of the heaviest damage. Fox News reported that the city had more than 25 collapsed structures with people still trapped, and that airports in six Colombian cities were shut down for structural inspections. Mayor Eder said earlier in the disaster that two people, an elderly woman and a young girl, had already been rescued alive, with at least 12 critical sites still being worked.
Volunteer rescuer Fernando Loaiza spoke for the city's determination:
"All of us here, the entire city of Cali, are hoping to find more survivors."
Cali resident Martha Perez told AFP on Wednesday night that two of her relatives were thought to still be trapped under rubble. She described feeling helpless but refused to give up.
"We will hold on to (hope) until the very end."
In Pereira's Providencia neighborhood, lawyer Ana Paulina Crosthwaite was hauling furniture and household items from her apartment block, which inspectors deemed unsafe. She told AFP the reality had not fully set in:
"We're in a state of shock. We're not prepared to tell our children that we have to pack whatever we can and start a new life."
In the town of Roldanillo, Yuliana Mendez picked through the wreckage of the beauty products store where she worked. "It's like starting over from scratch," she said. Her words echoed across a region where tens of thousands of families face the same reality.
The Colombian National Unit for Disaster Risk Management placed the official missing-persons count at almost 400. But civilian-run databases, whose operators and methodology have not been publicly identified, put the figure above 4,100. That tenfold gap raises hard questions about the government's ability to track the scale of this disaster, particularly in remote areas.
AP News reported that the epicenter region, Choco, is one of Colombia's poorest provinces, accessible largely only by boat, jungle trail, or airplane. The Colombian Geological Service documented more than 100 aftershocks since the initial quake. Sterling Palacios, a religious and environmental leader in Choco, described the devastation in blunt terms: "There are towns where people have lost everything, where people have died, where homes have been destroyed. We don't have a full panorama of the damage, but we know it's been massive."
The difficulty of reaching these communities means the true death toll could still rise. The death count passed 224 before climbing to 273 by Thursday, and officials have not indicated that the count is final.
President de la Espriella took office just days before the earthquake struck. Speaking to journalists in Bogotá, he said rescue efforts remained "focused on the disappeared" and pledged, "We will do what is necessary," vowing to "emerge again as a country and as a society." He also promised that Choco, long neglected by the central government, "will never again be the land of the forgotten."
Whether that promise holds will depend on what comes after the rescue phase ends. The "economic emergency" declaration presumably unlocks additional government resources and spending authority, though Colombian officials have not publicly detailed its scope.
International aid has begun to arrive. The United States announced $15.5 million in emergency assistance. The European Union pledged $2.3 million. Breitbart reported on one of the disaster's most dramatic rescues, a mother and her six-month-old baby pulled from a collapsed five-story building in Cali's Barrio Ciudad Capri neighborhood, and noted that at least 54 aftershocks had been recorded and 61 buildings had collapsed across the city.
Whether international rescue teams, beyond financial aid, have been deployed to Colombia remains unclear from official statements so far.
Ordinary Colombians have stepped into the breach. Blood donation drives have sprung up across the affected region. Ferney Cabrera, one of the donors, put it simply:
"It's about wanting to help your community, your city and your country."
That impulse, neighbors helping neighbors, volunteers silencing city blocks every thirty minutes to listen for a faint knock, stands in contrast to the bureaucratic fog surrounding the official missing-persons count. In neighboring Venezuela, questions about building quality and government housing programs dominated the aftermath of recent earthquakes there. Colombia will face its own reckoning over why 172 buildings collapsed outright and more than 12,500 homes were destroyed.
National Review published a photo gallery showing the scope of the destruction across Cali, Pereira, Dosquebradas, and Manizales, collapsed structures, residents and rescue workers digging side by side through debris, and the sheer geographic spread of the damage.
Rescue workers in Japan's recent Kumamoto earthquake faced a similar race against the 72-hour window. In Colombia, that window has now closed. What remains is the grim work of recovery, and the far harder work of rebuilding.
When governments fail to build structures that withstand foreseeable disasters, it is ordinary people, street vendors, lawyers, store clerks, mothers holding infants, who pay the price. Colombia's volunteers and donors have earned the world's respect. Its institutions still have to earn their trust.
