By Julia Symmes Cobb, Santiago Limachi, Luis Jaime Acosta and Nelson Bocanegra
Political Context
The earthquake struck just days after the inauguration of President Abelardo De La Espriella, who won a narrow victory against the candidate of the prior leftist government on a platform centered on less public spending and tougher security. Their neighbors helped them get out, but they keep reliving the moment. Colombia’s Foreign Minister Omar Bula rejected reports that the government had turned down international offers of aid, saying his office was coordinating the delivery of shipments that began arriving from Peru, Mexico and El Salvador.
In Cali, Colombia’s third-largest city, more than 56 buildings collapsed, killing at least 95 people and injuring close to 1,000 others, according to data from Asocapitales, the country’s capital cities association. Pereira, deep in the coffee-growing region and some 55 km from the quake’s epicenter, counted at least 79 dead, according to Asocapitales. The mayor’s office said 300 people were missing. FIRST TEST FOR NEW PRESIDENT Indira Meneses, 49, a nurse who lives with her two children and elderly mother, said the front of her home in Pereira collapsed, leaving them trapped inside.
“We will keep working after this window, but it is important to rescue the most people we can in this day we have left,” he said, adding that rescue workers needed silence and order to detect survivors under the mountains of rubble. “The earthquake will be the first test for the new Colombian president,” said Tiziano Breda, senior analyst for Latin America and the Caribbean at conflict monitoring group ACLED.
