Colombia has suffered a 7.4 magnitude earthquake on Monday, felt at around 07:34 local time (14:34 CEST, 13:34 BST in Europe), and the epicentre was in the San José del Palmar, in the department of Chocó, in the Western part of the Andes. The death toll has been confirmed to be over a hundred, with dozens of buildings collapsed.
There are reports of severe structural damage, cracks in facades, over sixt buildings collapsed, and the loss of communication in cities such as Cali and Pereira, and also in Manizales, where one of the towers of the cathedral collapsed. The quake was also felt in further cities such as Bogotá, Medellín, and even in other countries like Panama and Ecuador.
Colombia is one of the countries with a higher seismic risk, as three tectonic plates converge. There is an average of 50,000 earthquakes per month in the country, most of them are imperceptible to humans.
This 7.4 earthquake make it one of the largest felt at the country since the one in April 2016 in Ecuador, 7.8, that also affected Colombia, killing 676 people, most of them in Ecuador. The deathliest earthquakes in Colombia took place in 1999 in Córdoba-Navarco, with 1,900 casualties, and in 1994 in Irlanda, with 1,100 deaths.
