{"id":521309,"date":"2026-08-13T11:06:06","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T15:06:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.net\/en\/uncategorized\/the-earthquake-exposes-historical-shortcomings-of-choco-one-of-the-poorest-areas-in-colombia\/"},"modified":"2026-08-13T11:17:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T15:17:11","slug":"the-earthquake-exposes-historical-shortcomings-of-choco-one-of-the-poorest-areas-in-colombia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/international\/the-earthquake-exposes-historical-shortcomings-of-choco-one-of-the-poorest-areas-in-colombia\/","title":{"rendered":"The earthquake exposes historical shortcomings of Choc\u00f3, one of the poorest areas in Colombia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Quibd\u00f3 (Colombia).- <\/em><\/strong>In Choc\u00f3, one of the poorest departments in Colombia<\/a>, Monday’s 7.4 magnitude earthquake worsened a crisis marked by deficiencies in health, public services, and state attention, which hinders the response to the emergency and the care of thousands of victims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three days after the earthquake, the authorities concluded the search and rescue phase, after confirming 13 deaths in the department, nine of them in Quibd\u00f3, the capital, and focused their efforts on assisting the families who lost their homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read more: 72 hours after the earthquake in Colombia, the “window of life” narrows<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

During a Unified Command Post (PMU) meeting held Wednesday night in the Choc\u00f3 capital, Colombian Vice President Jos\u00e9 Manuel Restrepo summarized the most urgent needs of the emergency to EFE: “Shelters, tents, water tanks, hygiene kits, fuel, and power generators”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Minister of the Interior, Rodrigo Lara Restrepo, also announced the shipment of food, medical supplies, fuel to keep power plants operational, tents for shelters, and materials intended for the recovery of the electrical system, as well as the deployment of engineering teams to assess damage to homes, schools, public buildings, and police stations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the closure of search operations does not mean the end of the emergency. On the contrary, it opens an even more complex phase: identifying the victims, quantifying the damage, and rebuilding an infrastructure that has been hit for decades by state neglect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One emergency on top of another<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The magnitude of the challenge is reflected in the department’s social indicators, where monetary poverty reached 65.3% in 2025, more than double the national average, which stood at 28%, according to figures from the National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The situation is especially critical in Quibd\u00f3, the city with the highest incidence of monetary poverty in the country (61.7%) and an extreme poverty rate of 32.5%, a scenario that worsens the capacity to respond to an emergency such as the one caused by the earthquake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ombudsman, Iris Mar\u00edn, warned in statements to EFE that there is still no census that allows for determining the real number of victims, which hinders the distribution of aid and the planning of the institutional response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The emergency has also tested the capacity of the department’s healthcare system, where the San Francisco de As\u00eds Hospital, the main healthcare center in Quibd\u00f3, has an over-occupancy rate of nearly 160%, a situation aggravated by the difficulties in guaranteeing a stable power supply and adequate connectivity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Institutional capacity, at the limit<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The mayor of Quibd\u00f3, Rafael Bola\u00f1os, acknowledged that the earthquake exposed the limitations of the institutions to respond to a catastrophe of this magnitude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“This unexpected emergency has completely exposed the institutional response capacity,” the mayor stated to EFE.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The figures illustrate the scale of the challenge: more than 150 neighborhoods suffered some level of impact and at least 1,200 homes require a structural assessment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Technical teams are touring the hardest-hit sectors to identify buildings at risk and order preventive evacuations, a process that is moving more slowly than many families expect, as they report a lack of aid and official censuses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The main shelter enabled so far operates in the Las Am\u00e9ricas neighborhood boxing coliseum, although authorities are considering opening a second space to assist those who were left homeless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leaning poles on the verge of falling and crews of workers striving to restore electrical service are a reminder that normalcy is still far off, while a few meters away, the mountains of concrete where homes stood just three days ago still bear the intact traces of the disaster. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Quibd\u00f3 (Colombia).- In Choc\u00f3, one of the poorest departments in Colombia, Monday’s 7.4 magnitude earthquake worsened a crisis marked by deficiencies in health, public services, and state attention, which hinders the response to the emergency and the care of thousands of victims. Three days after the earthquake, the authorities concluded the search and rescue phase, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":102,"featured_media":521310,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[95],"tags":[43601,13631,44182,40391,44683,40853],"class_list":["post-521309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-international","tag-breakingnews","tag-colombia","tag-cover","tag-earthquake","tag-shortcomings","tag-thetruthnewspaper"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/phj1q1-2bCd","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/08\/Plantilla-para-portal-2026-08-13T105532.043.jpg","dum_api":{"author_name":"Yoan Silverio","author_image":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/cropped-Captura-de-pantalla-2024-03-07-a-las-9.52.03\u202fp.-m-96x96.jpg","categories_name":["International"],"featured_media_url":"https:\/\/cdn.deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/08\/Plantilla-para-portal-2026-08-13T105532.043.jpg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/102"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}