Powerful earthquake in Colombia kills more than 100 people

By Gonzalo Zegarra, Sol Amaya, Sana Noor Haq, Michael Rios

(CNN) — A 7.4 magnitude earthquake struck western Colombia on Monday, killing at least 111 people across the country.

The epicenter was located in San José del Palmar, in the department of Chocó, about 240 kilometers (150 miles) west of Bogotá, at a depth of 107 kilometers at 7:34 a.m. (local time, 8:34 a.m. Miami time), the USGS reported.

Dozens of people died in the Risaralda region alone, authorities told local media earlier. Deaths, injuries and structural damages were also reported in the regions of Valle del Cauca, Caldas, Antioquia and Chocó.

Colombia’s President Abelardo De la Espriella – who only took office on Friday – declared a state of national disaster, which will help mobilize extra resources to the most affected regions.

Dozens more people are injured, and hundreds of homes and buildings have collapsed, the president said.

In Colombia’s third-largest city, Cali, at least 30 buildings collapsed with people trapped under the rubble, according to the Mayor Alejandro Eder. He called on people to check infrastructure for “structural damage,” urging them to evacuate should they see “large cracks.”

Several patients are trapped under the rubble of a partially fallen hospital in Cali, according to the governor of the Valle del Cauca region, Dilian Francisca Toro.

It is one of several health institutions in the city have been closed and evacuated because of structural damage, the local government said.

“The priority is to try to rescue the people who are still under the rubble,” the president said.

Other regional leaders pledged to bolster rescue efforts, with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum offering her government’s support.

The powerful quake in Colombia came weeks after twin earthquakes ravaged neighboring Venezuela in late June, killing at least 6,300 people, displacing nearly 18,000 residents and leaving scores of survivors separated from loved ones. At the time, some of those shocks were felt in Colombia – where the most populated cities likely impacted by the quake on Monday include Zarzal, Pereira and Armenia, according to the USGS.

The quake damaged Colombian airports in six cities – Pereira, Manizales, Quibdó, Armenia, Cartago, and Buenaventura – according to the country’s Civil Aviation Authority, suspending flight operations.

In the nation’s capital, the tremor was felt strongly, alarms sounded, and in many buildings people evacuated to the streets as a precaution. “At this time there are no reports of injuries or structural damage, only some cracks in buildings,” Bogotá Mayor Carlos Galán said on X.

In total, more than 2 million people were exposed to very strong shaking during the earthquake, which could bring “considerable damage in poorly built structures,” according to the scale used by the USGS. The agency estimated a significant number of deaths, with a roughly one-in-three chance that fatalities could top 1,000.

This story has been updated with additional information.

CNN’s Brandon Miller contributed reporting.

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