The Colombian Association of Capital Cities reports a provisional toll of at least 132 dead and 570 injured in the departments hit by Monday's 7.4-magnitude earthquake -and its subsequent aftershocks-.
Cauca and Risaralda, located to the west of the so-called Coffee Axis, are the regions with the highest number of victims, according to the newspaper "El Espectador", with at least 60 and 15 deaths respectively, plus around 13 in Chocó. Other affected regions include Caldas and Quindío.
undefined
The epicentre was in San José del Palmar, in the south-east of Chocó, bordering Valle del Cauca and Risaralda and roughly equidistant from the cities of Cali and Medellín, with the former suffering the most damage to its infrastructure. Seismographs indicate that the natural disaster originated within the Nazca plate, at a depth of around 103 kilometres. This plate sinks beneath the South American plate that forms the Andes mountain range, causing friction and events of this kind.
Abelardo de la Espriella, who only recently took office as president of Colombia, travelled on Monday afternoon to Quibdó, capital of the department of Chocó, and later to Cali. As part of the reinforcement of emergency efforts, the latter city will receive 60 rescue workers from Bogotá and a further 32 members of the armed forces.
