Rescue crews continued searching through the rubble of collapsed buildings in western Colombia on Saturday, five days after a powerful earthquake killed at least 294 people and left hundreds more missing.
Greek Reporter footage filmed in Cali on Saturday shows crews working among the ruins as the effort to find people who may still be alive continues. The city is among the areas hardest hit by the magnitude-7.4 earthquake that struck western Colombia on Monday, August 10.
Colombia’s disaster management authorities put the nationwide toll on Saturday at at least 294 dead, 320 missing and nearly 4,000 injured, according to Reuters. More than two-thirds of the deaths have been concentrated in Cali and Pereira, two major cities in western Colombia.
Signs of life detected beneath rubble
The chances of finding additional survivors are diminishing as rescue operations enter their sixth day, but teams have not abandoned the search everywhere.
In Cali, firefighters said Saturday that rescuers had identified one remaining location showing signs that people could still be alive beneath the rubble. At other collapse sites, operations had shifted largely from rescue to recovering bodies and clearing debris.
The previous day, authorities had reported apparent signs of life beneath collapsed buildings in Cali, while rescuers in Pereira also made contact with a woman trapped in the ruins of a hotel. Search-and-rescue operations in Cali were subsequently extended through Saturday.
The continuing operation captured by Greek Reporter reflects the increasingly difficult work facing rescue teams as the window for finding survivors narrows.
Magnitude-7.4 earthquake devastated western Colombia
The earthquake struck shortly after 7:30 a.m. Monday near San José del Palmar in Colombia’s Chocó department. Buildings were damaged or destroyed across a wide area stretching from the Pacific region through Cali and into Colombia’s coffee-growing region.
Homes, apartment buildings, schools, hospitals and churches were among the structures damaged in the disaster. Cali, Colombia’s third-largest city, and Pereira have suffered some of the heaviest casualties.
In the first days after the earthquake, rescuers pulled people alive from collapsed structures as emergency workers, volunteers and residents worked through piles of concrete and debris. By Saturday, however, the operation had entered a more difficult phase, with hundreds of people still unaccounted for.
Authorities have warned that casualty figures could continue to change as searches and recovery work proceed across the affected region.
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