Cali (Colombia).- The first 72 hours after the 7.4 magnitude earthquake that struck Colombia were completed this Thursday, with rescue teams working non-stop on collapsed buildings, while the possibility of finding survivors becomes increasingly narrow.
The earthquake occurred at 07:34 local time (12:34 GMT) on Monday, August 10, and its epicenter was the town of San José del Palmar, in the Chocó department, in the Pacific region, at a depth of 103 kilometers.
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The Government indicated on Wednesday that the earthquake has so far left 265 people dead, 3,494 injured, and 496 missing. Likewise, authorities have recorded the destruction of 11,347 homes, damage to another 53,526 houses, and the collapse of 140 buildings.
According to the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD), the emergency affects 24,324 families and 403 municipalities in 14 of the country’s 32 departments.
In Cali, capital of the Valle del Cauca department (southwest), communes 17 and 19 are among the most affected areas. Traveling along the traditional Calle Quinta, immortalized in songs by Grupo Niche, means encountering a desolate scene due to the number of cracked buildings, structures with serious damage, and others that were completely destroyed.
“From the very first moment we haven’t stopped, we have deployed all our institutional strength to address the emergency and received the solidarity of the people of Cali,” affirmed the mayor of Cali, Alejandro Eder.
In this city, 96 deaths, 88 rescued people, 111 missing, and 1,224 injured have already been confirmed. In addition, 80 buildings have partially or totally collapsed and another 832 have suffered serious structural damage.
In places where signs of life still exist, specialized teams continue search efforts with periods of absolute silence to try to detect tapping, shouting, or any other noise coming from the rubble.
In another 20 points of the city, the survival of people has already been ruled out and the authorities are preparing to begin debris removal work after the initial 72 hours, known as the “window of life,” after which the chances of rescuing people alive fade away.
Death is felt
The situation has become especially complex in some of the places where buildings were reduced to mountains of rubble, as the smell of decomposition from bodies trapped under the ruins is already being felt.
During Wednesday night and early Thursday morning, more than 1,000 soldiers from the Third Brigade of the National Army remained deployed at more than 40 points in Cali to support the communities affected by the emergency.
Search efforts also have international support. The Los Topos Azteca brigade arrived in Cali yesterday, a group of Mexican rescuers that joined the operations after concluding a mission in Venezuela following the double earthquake on June 24 in La Guaira.
Rescuers use equipment capable of detecting possible signals under structures using electromagnetic and mechanical or acoustic waves, and they also conduct physical searches in the deepest areas of the destroyed buildings.
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The solidarity of countries has been felt. More than 100 tons of humanitarian aid from El Salvador have arrived in the city in two deliveries made by that country’s government, and rescuers from the United States have also arrived.
Drama in the morgues
Tragedy also moved to the morgues. The one in Cali has already collapsed due to the number of bodies received, so some of the corpses were transferred to the neighboring municipality of Palmira.
There, the lines of relatives waiting for the handover of their loved ones reflect another dimension of the emergency: the identification and release of the victims’ bodies.
The emergency affects pets equally. In Cali, response teams have found 24 pets alive, 14 deceased, and about 240 are missing following the earthquake.
The rescued animals are being cared for by the Mayor’s Office Animal Welfare Center while their owners try to locate them and reunite with them.
Although the first 72 hours have already passed, the search does not stop. On the six fronts where there are still signs of life, rescuers continue to remove rubble, pausing to listen for someone on the other side.
