Colombia Earthquake: What We Know About the Magnitude 7.4 Quake and the Death Toll So Far

Update — August 15, 2026: Colombia’s disaster agency UNGRD issued a further update on the earthquake’s national toll, reporting 294 dead, 3,935 injured and 320 missing as of Saturday, August 15. The article previously reflected a Thursday, August 13 toll of 281 dead, 3,971 injured and 379 missing, which has since changed.

Update — August 13, 2026: Detailed on-the-ground reporting from San Jose del Palmar, confirmation of a formal Pacific tsunami assessment, and specific Cali curfew/militarization details have all since been published. The article previously reflected these three specific items as not yet reported, which has since changed.

A magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck western Colombia on Monday, August 10, 2026. The confirmed death toll climbed repeatedly through that day, and rescue operations remained underway a day later. The most recent national figure comes from Colombia’s disaster agency UNGRD, in a Saturday, August 15 update reported by Infobae: 294 dead, 3,935 injured, and 320 people still missing. That supersedes a Wednesday address in which he had given 265 dead and nearly 500 unaccounted for, which had itself superseded the 132 dead figure Asocapitales, the association of Colombia’s capital cities, had compiled as of Monday evening. The quake hit at 7:34 a.m. local time, centered about 5 kilometers from the small town of San José del Palmar in Chocó department — a department in Colombia is roughly what a state is in the U.S., with its own capital city — according to the U.S. Geological Survey and Colombia’s own Servicio Geológico Colombiano (SGC). Both agencies agree on the magnitude; USGS puts the depth at 110.3 kilometers, while SGC’s own bulletin lists 103 kilometers — both call it an intermediate-depth quake, far deeper than a typical damaging shallow one.

Colombia’s newly inaugurated President Abelardo de la Espriella, who took office August 7 — just three days before the quake — declared a state of national disaster that afternoon. “The first priority is rescuing the people trapped under the rubble,” he said. He ordered the national disaster-response agency, UNGRD (Unidad Nacional para la Gestion del Riesgo de Desastres), to coordinate the response through a unified command post and deployed soldiers to the hardest-hit areas.

Key facts

Magnitude: 7.4, agreed by USGS and Colombia’s SGC — SGC calls it the highest-magnitude earthquake recorded in Colombia so far this century.
When and where: Monday, August 10, 2026, 7:34 a.m. local time, centered about 5 km from San José del Palmar, Chocó department.
Depth: USGS puts it at 110.3 km; SGC’s own bulletin lists 103 km — both call it an intermediate-depth quake.
National death toll: 294 dead, 3,935 injured, and 320 missing, per UNGRD’s Saturday, August 15 update (Infobae), up from 281 dead reported by President de la Espriella’s Thursday address (ABC News). That supersedes his Wednesday address (265 dead, nearly 500 unaccounted for) and the government’s earlier 132 dead figure (Asocapitales, Monday evening).
Cali death toll: the president gave 35 dead (Tuesday); Reuters put Cali’s toll at at least 85 (also Tuesday) — the reporting does not explain the gap.
Aftershocks: SGC’s last reported count had risen to 47, up to magnitude 4.8, by early evening Monday.
Tsunami: the U.S. National Tsunami Warning Center said the quake was not expected to generate one, covering the U.S. West Coast, British Columbia and Alaska.
President: Abelardo de la Espriella, in office since August 7, 2026, declared a state of national disaster.

Timeline

Monday, 7:34 a.m. local time — Magnitude 7.4 earthquake strikes, centered about 5 km from San José del Palmar, Chocó department (USGS/SGC).
Monday, midday — President de la Espriella reports a government balance of at least 111 dead and 87 injured.
Monday, afternoon — President declares a state of national disaster and orders UNGRD to coordinate the response.
Monday, 5:30 p.m. — Asocapitales puts the national toll at 132 dead and 570 injured.
Monday, early evening — SGC’s aftershock count rises to 47, still topping out at magnitude 4.8.
Tuesday, early morning — President repeats the 132 dead figure, with the injured count still given as 570.
Tuesday — Reuters reports at least 164 dead nationally — at least 85 in Cali, 66 in Pereira, 13 in Chocó — a tally not reconciled with the government’s 132.
Tuesday — President gives a separate Cali-only figure: 35 dead, about 700 injured, roughly 5,000 homes damaged — not an update to the national toll; Reuters’ Tuesday count for Cali was at least 85, and the discrepancy is unexplained.
Tuesday evening — Reuters reports the national toll has risen to at least 250 dead, with 101 in Pereira and 95 in Cali, and says government entities had been instructed not to release their own updated figures.

The death toll is still moving

Casualty figures have risen through repeated updates, and readers should treat any single number as a snapshot rather than a final count. At midday Monday, President de la Espriella gave a government balance of at least 111 dead and 87 injured. By 5:30 p.m. that day, Asocapitales — an association of the governments of Colombia’s capital cities, not the national government itself — put the national toll at 132 dead and 570 injured. The president repeated that same 132 figure early Tuesday morning, with the injured count still given as 570. That is the most recent national figure the government has stood behind, though the government did not compile it: 132 dead. On Tuesday, a Reuters report — carried by other news outlets — put the national toll higher, at at least 164 dead, with a city-by-city breakdown of at least 85 in Cali, 66 in Pereira and 13 in Chocó. Reuters’ count is a news-agency tally, not an official government figure, and officials have not reconciled it with the government’s own 132. The two numbers do not match, and neither has replaced the other. Rescue crews are still working — with excavators and by hand through the night, according to the Reuters report — so any number here could still change.

A separate Reuters report filed Tuesday evening put the national toll higher still, at at least 250 dead, built from city-level figures of 101 in Pereira and 95 in Cali. That report also said government entities had been told not to share their own updated figures, and that the national government had not issued a new official count as of Tuesday afternoon — a departure from the president’s own Monday and Tuesday-morning updates described above. The government did issue a new count the next day: in a Wednesday national address, President de la Espriella said the earthquake had killed 265 people and left nearly 500 unaccounted for, per Reuters. That address also gave city-level figures of 83 dead in Pereira and 74 in Cali — lower than the 101 and 95 the Tuesday Reuters report had cited for those same cities, a discrepancy this article cannot explain. By Thursday, the president had updated the toll to 281 dead, with 3,971 injured and 379 missing, per ABC News; Colombia’s disaster agency UNGRD reported a further update on Saturday, August 15, to 294 dead, 3,935 injured and 320 missing, per Infobae. That figure is the most recent official national count reported as of this writing, but — as the pattern above shows — earlier counts have also been superseded within a day, so it may not be the last.

On Tuesday, the president also gave a separate, later figure for Cali alone: 35 dead, about 700 injured, and roughly 5,000 homes damaged or destroyed in the city, with 228 rescuers and search dogs deployed there. That is a city-level count, not an update to the national toll, and the two should not be compared directly. The 700 injured is a Cali-only figure from the president’s Tuesday update, while the 570 injured comes from Asocapitales’ national count on Monday evening — different counters, on different days, counting different areas. The same Tuesday Reuters report puts Cali’s death toll at at least 85, not the president’s 35. Both figures are for Tuesday, and both are for the same city. The reporting does not explain why. The president’s Cali figure and the national 132 come from different counting bodies with different cutoffs, and officials have not said how the two relate; they cannot be added together.

The count of people still missing is similarly unsettled. Cali’s mayor said at least 188 people were missing in that city, and the president gave the same figure for Cali in his Tuesday update. Al Jazeera’s reporting cited digital missing-person databases that had recorded more than 1,400 people reported missing nationally, mostly in Cali and Pereira, as of Monday afternoon. No single reconciled national missing-person figure has been reported.

Where the damage is worst

The epicenter itself sits in a remote, sparsely populated part of Chocó. The heaviest reported death tolls are in cities well outside it: Pereira and Cali, with Quibdó and Manizales also badly hit. The Reuters count described above puts Pereira’s dead at 66 — the same news-agency count that gives Cali at least 85 — while a separate, government-linked consolidated tally (drawing on UNGRD and departmental data) puts Pereira’s toll at 79; the two figures have not been reconciled. Five department capitals — Pereira, Cali, Quibdó, Manizales and Armenia — were placed on red alert. Chocó’s governor, Nubia Carolina Córdoba-Curi, said parts of her department remained cut off from communication entirely and asked for helicopter support just to assess the damage there. Multiple outlets have since reported directly from San José del Palmar: no deaths were recorded in the town itself, but roughly 400 to 441 homes and families were affected, at least 20 buildings collapsed, the town lost electricity and had water-supply problems, and its only road access was cut, leaving it reachable only by helicopter; the mayor has spoken on record about the response.

President de la Espriella’s Monday damage balance, together with local officials, reported building damage that included a partially collapsed hospital in Cali, the collapsed bell tower of the cathedral in Manizales, and damage to the passenger terminal at Pereira’s Matecaña International Airport. National counts of collapsed buildings conflict between sources — one government-linked figure puts them at 61, while a separate consolidated count from Colombian capital cities puts them at 86 — so the precise total is not settled.

Airports suspended for inspection:

El Tiempo and Infobae: seven airports — those serving Cali, Pereira, Manizales, Armenia, Cartago, Buenaventura and Quibdó.
Al Jazeera’s separate count: six, without Cali.
Bogotá’s El Dorado International Airport, Colombia’s main gateway for flights to and from the United States, continued operating normally.

City responses:

Cali: curfew imposed; Mayor Alejandro Eder announced the city would be militarized, and officials have since detailed what that involves: an 8 p.m.-to-6 a.m. curfew (Aug. 10-11, later renewed) imposed specifically to prevent looting, reinforced police and military presence concentrated in comunas 17 and 19 and other hard-hit sectors, 60 additional rescuers sent from Bogota plus 32 armed-forces personnel, and published exemptions for emergency, transport and essential-services workers.
Pereira: curfew running from 6 p.m. to 5 a.m., plus a car-free day.
Manizales: curfew from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., under Mayor Jorge Eduardo Rojas.

Aftershocks are continuing

The SGC recorded at least 18 aftershocks by midday Monday, ranging from magnitude 1.4 to 4.8, and later reported the count had risen to 47 by early evening, still topping out at magnitude 4.8. That is the last aftershock count reported, which does not mean the aftershocks have stopped. Authorities have urged residents to stay out of homes and other buildings until structural inspections confirm they are safe.

Why a deep quake shook so much of the country

The quake was felt strongly not just in Chocó but in Bogotá, Medellín, Cali and Manizales, and as far away as Barranquilla on the Caribbean coast, plus across the border in Ecuador and Panama. Bogotá saw cracked buildings and some evacuations but no severe damage or deaths reported in the capital. In Ecuador, hospitals in Quito were evacuated as a precaution and some home damage was reported in Carchi and Esmeraldas provinces; in Panama, the shaking triggered evacuations and a brief suspension of the Panama City metro; Panama’s national civil protection system said the quake was felt lightly in Panama City and Darién province, with no structural damage reported there. No casualties have been reported in either country.

Seismologists Judith A. Hubbard and Kyle Bradley, writing in their newsletter Earthquake Insights, explained why a quake this deep is felt so widely: deep earthquakes shake hardest near the epicenter and then fall off only slowly with distance, because the ground directly above the rupture is already about 110 kilometers from it, and a point 100 kilometers away from the epicenter is only about 148 kilometers from it. The USGS’s own tectonic summary makes a similar point, noting that quakes at this depth typically shake a wider area, even if the intensity right at the epicenter is often lower than a shallow quake of the same size would produce. That summary also ties the quake to the Nazca plate, which is subducting beneath western Colombia; earthquakes at this depth occur inside the descending plate rather than at the shallow boundary where it meets South America, which is part of why Colombia has earthquakes at all.

The SGC has called it the highest-magnitude earthquake recorded in Colombia so far this century.

What the tsunami warning covered

The U.S. National Tsunami Warning Center said in a statement issued the day of the quake that the earthquake was “not expected to generate a tsunami” and that there was “no tsunami danger for the U.S. West Coast, British Columbia, or Alaska.” That statement covers the U.S. Pacific coast, British Columbia and Alaska specifically. Colombia’s Pacific coast was formally assessed: the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center confirmed at 12:55 UTC on August 10 that there was no tsunami threat, and the country’s main Pacific port, Buenaventura, was inspected and confirmed operational with no significant damage.

The U.S. response

The U.S. State Department pledged $15.5 million in emergency aid for shelter, food, protection and earthquake assessments in Colombia. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the administration was “closely monitoring” the situation and that the U.S. “stands ready to support the people of Colombia.” The U.S. Embassy in Bogotá said it is actively assisting American citizens in the country; anyone needing help can call the embassy’s hotline at +1-202-501-4444 from abroad or +1-888-407-4747 from the U.S. or Canada. No American citizens have been reported killed or injured.

How to help

Several organizations are collecting donations specifically for this earthquake:

Direct Relief
The American Red Cross
GlobalGiving’s Colombia Earthquake Relief Fund
UNICEF USA, for child-focused aid

Frequently asked questions

Why do the death toll figures differ between sources?

The last national count the government has stood behind is 132 dead — compiled by Asocapitales, the association of Colombia’s capital cities, as of Monday evening and repeated by the president on Tuesday. Reuters reported a higher national toll on Tuesday, rising to at least 250 dead by Tuesday evening (101 in Pereira, 95 in Cali), and said government entities had been told not to share their own updated figures. Reuters’ count is a news-agency tally, not an official government figure, and officials have not issued a newer official number or reconciled it with Reuters’ count.

Why was the earthquake felt so far from where it struck?

Because it was an intermediate-depth quake — USGS puts the depth at 110.3 kilometers, SGC at 103 kilometers — and shaking from a quake that deep falls off only slowly with distance, so it is felt across a far broader region than a shallow quake of the same size, according to seismologists Judith A. Hubbard and Kyle Bradley and the USGS’s own tectonic summary.