Rescuers raced against time in Colombia on Friday to free a man found alive beneath a collapsed hotel, a rare sign of hope nearly four days after one of the strongest earthquakes to hit the Andean nation in decades reduced neighbourhoods to rubble and left hundreds dead or missing.
The operation in the coffee-region city of Pereira had become the main focus of a disaster response increasingly shifting from the search for survivors to the grim work of clearing debris and accounting for the missing.
“Possibly there are (still) people alive, we believe so,” rescuer John Bedoya told Caracol Television from the site, where emergency crews worked through a mound of concrete, brick and twisted metal.
“One or two could be alive.”The 7.4-magnitude quake struck shortly after 7:30 am on Monday, with its epicenter in San Jose del Palmar in the Choco department. It toppled apartment blocks and damaged homes, schools and hospitals across western Colombia, from the Pacific port of Buenaventura to the inland cities of Cali and Pereira.
Authorities said on Friday morning that 285 people had been killed and nearly 4,000 injured. Nearly 400 others were still missing.
The government said tens of thousands of homes were damaged and many destroyed, underlining the scale of a disaster that has left many Colombians sleeping in shelters or outside unsafe buildings.
The UN refugee agency warned on Friday the earthquake could trigger fresh displacement in a country already grappling with conflict, migration and other humanitarian pressures.
Meanwhile, the World Bank on Friday said it had disbursed $200 million to Colombia for its emergency response to a deadly August 10 earthquake that left hundreds dead.
The multilateral development bank said it was working with the Colombian government and development partners, financial institutions and the private sector to address immediate needs, while laying the foundations for recovery.
