Seven days after a devastating 7.4 magnitude earthquake tore through western and southwestern Colombia, heavy machinery rumbles across flattened urban neighborhoods as rescue and cleanup crews work through rubble to locate any remaining survivors. Even as official prospects of finding people alive under collapsed structures fade, volunteer rescuers refuse to abandon their search, amid a growing national crisis that has already claimed hundreds of lives and left tens of thousands homeless.
The quake, which struck last Monday, has killed nearly 300 people, destroyed thousands of residential and commercial buildings, and left at least 140 residents unaccounted for, according to Colombian government figures. Of the regions impacted, the western city of Pereira and southwestern hub Cali have suffered some of the worst damage. In Pereira, one of the epicenters of destruction, 30-year-old nursing student Andres Cano stood alongside fellow volunteer rescuers clad in orange safety vests and helmets, and acknowledged the grim shift in expectations. “The hope of locating survivors is much lower now,” Cano told reporters. “You feel exhausted, it’s mostly mental fatigue.”
The disaster comes as an early, critical test for Colombia’s new presidential administration: right-wing President Abelardo de la Espriella was sworn in just three days before the earthquake hit. Already, the new leader has moved to secure international support, asking United States President Donald Trump on Saturday to temporarily suspend bilateral tariffs to ease the country’s recovery burden.
Across impacted communities, the scale of displacement remains staggering. Officials confirm nearly 27,000 homes were completely destroyed, leaving thousands of survivors without permanent shelter. Many have been forced to sleep on mattresses and makeshift beds in open public spaces, after evacuating damaged or structurally unsound buildings. To streamline aid efforts, emergency shelters have set up QR codes that allow affected residents to digitally report missing loved ones or property damage. In the hardest-hit urban zones, dangerous buildings at risk of secondary collapse are marked with large red X’s, blocking pedestrian access to avoid further injury.
In Cali, Colombia’s third-largest city, 41-year-old lawyer Jorge Leon stood beside a yellow moving truck loaded with the few belongings he managed to salvage from his ruined home, describing the disorienting pain of losing everything. “It feels like I’m living in a movie or a dream; I can’t quite grasp it,” Leon told Agence France-Presse. “It hurts to have to start all over again.” Cali mayor Alejandro Eder has projected that full reconstruction of the city will cost a minimum of $3.2 billion, a staggering price tag for a country already grappling with economic constraints.
While the Colombian government has already received tens of millions of dollars in emergency aid from international partners including the United States and multilateral institutions such as the World Bank, officials warn that full recovery will take years. On the wall of a collapsed five-story apartment building in one hard-hit neighborhood, official rescuers marked a symbol indicating search operations for survivors had concluded: a red V crossed by a horizontal line. But volunteer teams have rejected calls to stand down, even though global emergency response standards hold that the chance of survival after 72 hours trapped under rubble drops drastically.
Leading one volunteer rescue team called “Valentia” — Spanish for “courage” — 58-year-old university professor Juan Carlos Tabares says his team will keep searching to hold onto hope. “Although we’ve been told that several days have passed, we continue to search for lives because we want to keep hope alive,” Tabares said. As backhoes, cranes and bulldozers continue to clear debris across the impacted region, the quiet resolve of volunteers stands alongside the grief of families who have lost everything, as the country begins the long, slow process of rebuilding.