Colombia's death toll from Monday's 7.4 quake is still climbing
UNGRD put the toll at 273 on Thursday, with 377 still missing. The quake was 7.4, the strongest in Colombia this century.
A magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck Colombia on Monday, 10 August, with its epicenter near San José del Palmar in Chocó. It is the strongest quake to hit the country this century. On Thursday, David Santiago Tamayo of the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management said the death toll had risen to 273, with 3,824 people injured and 377 listed as missing. The Institute of Forensic Medicine had received 250 bodies, 227 of them identified. Officials also reported 12,584 homes destroyed, 74,873 damaged, 172 buildings collapsed, 2,198 schools affected, and 216 health centers damaged, across 14 departments.
A death toll that is still moving four days later is the honest version of a disaster, not the first-night number. The gap between the 377 official missing and the civilian count of over 4,000 is the part I cannot leave alone, because that is where a state either finds people or loses the argument that it is in control. This is also a Pacific-coast and Andean-city story at once: Chocó was the epicenter, and Cali, Pereira, and Manizales took the damage.
The next useful number is not another death-toll tick. It is whether the missing list shrinks toward the official figure or the official figure rises toward the civilian one. The government has already declared an economic emergency and used NASA satellite imagery. Reconstruction will be the longer story, and it will not move at rescue speed.