By Julia Symmes Cobb, Santiago Limachi, Luis Jaime Acosta and Nelson Bocanegra
CALI/PEREIRA, Colombia, Aug 12 (Reuters) – Colombian rescue teams raced on Wednesday to find survivors still trapped beneath collapsed buildings two days after a powerful earthquake killed close to 250 people across the nation’s western valleys and coffee-growing region.
“We are in a race against time to save lives,” Cali Mayor Alejandro Eder told reporters, warning that less than a day was left in the critical 72-hour window during which there are far greater chances of finding quake survivors.
“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.
Official estimates suggest the 7.4-magnitude quake, which struck the South American country just after 7 a.m. local time (1200 GMT) on Monday, also injured 3,770 people, destroyed more than 9,550 homes and impacted more than 30,300 families.
In Cali, Colombia’s third-largest city, 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 (34 miles) 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. Their neighbors helped them get out, but they keep reliving the moment.
“I have five neighbors who died under the rubble,” Meneses said. “We’re waiting for local officials to help us rebuild and replace what we lost, but so far, no one has come.”
German Bahamon, the head of Colombia’s coffee federation, said ports in Buenaventura have paused operations while inspectors evaluate the impact of landslides on key roads, but “exports continue as usual, mainly through Caribbean ports.”
Colombia is the world’s third-largest coffee producer, and hundreds of thousands of families rely on the sector.
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.
He traveled to the affected regions early this week and pledged aid to those who lost homes and businesses due to the quake. Several local mayors have announced nightly curfews, citing the possibility of looting.
“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.
“De La Espriella ran on a platform to cut public finances, including defunding the state’s risk management unit,” he added. “This unit is currently at the forefront of the emergency response.”
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.
The head of Topos Azteca, a Mexican search-and-rescue team, said in a video message that he had arrived straight from Venezuela, which suffered devastating twin quakes at the end of June.
FAMILIES AWAIT NEWS
Rescue efforts in Cali were concentrated around seven buildings that might still hold survivors.
At the Torres del Limonar complex in the southern part of the city, residents formed long bucket brigades with soldiers, employees of the mayor’s office and others, handing down rubble from the peak of the debris.
Camilo Cano, a fire department official from Bogota, told Reuters that rescue efforts were more organized after police began restricting volunteers, which helped reduce noise and vibrations and allowed sensors to better detect movement under the debris.
He said the possibility of a serious aftershock posed risks to any large crowds, even as family members of those still trapped under the building waited anxiously nearby for news.
Some 30 km (19 miles) north-east of Cali in Palmira, relatives of the deceased waited outside a morgue on plastic chairs under the shade of trees. An official called out the names of identified bodies via a loud speaker.
Santiago Lloreda, 31, told Reuters he was at work when the quake hit his apartment, killing his mother and 13-month-old daughter Salma, who was too young to have a fingerprint registry and needs to be identified though DNA samples via Bogota.
“My daughter was a dream made reality,” he said. “My mother was the pillar of our family, she took care of everyone and always made you laugh … she gave everything up to look after the baby. It cost her life but it made her so proud and happy.”
Ricardo, who did not share his last name, said he traveled from Miami to recover the body of his sister. He praised the efforts of doctors and neighbors’ solidarity.
“There are heroes in there helping return our family’s bodies to us as soon as they can,” he said, adding that his niece was awaiting surgery for fractures to her skull, jaw, leg and a collapsed lung.
“She’s alive. We know she’s going to get better,” he said.
(Reporting by Julia Symmes Cobb in Cali and Palmira, Santiago Limachi in Cali, Nelson Bocanegra in Pereira and Luis Jaime Acosta in Bogota; Writing by Sarah Morland and Kylie Madry; Editing by Paul Simao and Rosalba O’Brien)
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