A POWERFUL 7.4 magnitude earthquake struck western Colombia on Monday, killing at least 111 people and damaging hundreds of buildings, President Abelardo de la Espriella said. The President declared an emergency, which will expedite funding for the quake recovery, and said he would visit the disaster zone, centered round the rural region of Choco. The epicentre was in San Jose Del Palmar, a community of about 4,800 people in the Choco region, about 250 miles (400 kilometres) west of Bogota, the US Geological Survey and Colombia’s counterpart reported. The USGS said it struck at a depth of 66 miles (107 kilometres). The quake was also felt in neighbouring Ecuador and Panama, though minimal damage was reported there. The quake left cities across the west of the country - Pereira, Quibdo, Cali and Manizales - ravaged. Residents and search teams picked through the rubble of collapsed buildings amid concerns by authorities of aftershocks. Colombia’s interior minister said more than 20 municipalities across the country had been hit. Colombia’s Pacific region around the quake’s epicentre lies along the “Ring of Fire”, the line of seismic faults encircling the Pacific Ocean where most of the world’s earthquakes occur. The Pacific, particularly the Choco region, is one of the poorest regions in the country. Nestled in the dense jungle, much of Choco is highly rural and only reachable by boat or plane, which may pose a problem for authorities in assessing the wider toll.

 

Colombia’s Geological Service said Monday that it had been “the highest magnitude earthquake registered in Colombia in the last decade” and that it had been followed by two 2.8 and 4.8 magnitude aftershocks. Authorities also reported that flights were suspended in the airports of Manizales, Quibdo, Armenia, Cartago, Buenaventura and Pereira. The earthquakes left many in the Andean nation unnerved after two back-to-back quakes devastated neighbouring Venezuela in late June, destroyed hundreds of buildings and killed more than 5,000 people. At the same time, the quake brought down buildings in Colombia, and desperate families in Venezuela continued to search the ruins for the bodies of their loved ones. In Pereira, photos and videos published by local media showed pieces of the airport ceiling falling down on travellers taking shelter and screaming, and people running through rubble in a panic. In nearby Manizales, a city in the coffee-producing mountains of Colombia, one of the towers of the neo-Gothic cathedral collapsed and fell on the nave. Jorge Eduardo Rojas, the Mayor of Manizales, asked residents to stay outside in case of aftershocks. Choco region reported injured people and damaged buildings, but provided few details. In Cali, a city of 2 million people, Mayor Alejandro Eder said that residents were trapped in at least 19 buildings that had collapsed.