A magnitude-7.4 earthquake [8] struck Colombia on Monday, leaving 181 people dead and 1,310 injured [1, 2].
The disaster caused significant structural failure across several major capital cities, highlighting the vulnerability of urban infrastructure to high-magnitude seismic events in the region.
Andrés Santa María, the executive director of the Asociación Colombiana de Ciudades Capitales (Asocapitales), said the preliminary figures were released Tuesday [1]. The earthquake occurred Aug. 10, 2026, at 7:34 a.m. [5]. The epicenter was located in the municipality of San José del Palmar [9].
According to Asocapitales, the quake resulted in 153 collapsed buildings [3]. The impact was most severe in the cities of Cali and Pereira. In Cali, 95 people died and 56 buildings collapsed [4, 5]. In Pereira, 72 people died and 66 buildings were affected [6, 7].
Reports on the casualty count vary across different news outlets. Some sources cite death tolls as low as 165 or as high as 240, while injury estimates range from 1,246 to 1,595 [10, 11, 12]. Asocapitales provided the current preliminary baseline for the affected capital cities.
Emergency crews continue to assess the damage in the hardest-hit urban centers. The scale of the collapse in Cali and Pereira suggests a concentrated impact of the seismic waves on these specific metropolitan areas, a factor that may influence future building code revisions in Colombia.
“181 people dead and 1,310 injured”
The discrepancy in early casualty figures is common in the immediate aftermath of large-scale disasters, but the consistent reporting of structural failures in Cali and Pereira indicates a critical failure of urban resilience. The magnitude-7.4 event underscores the ongoing risk posed by the Andean seismic zone to Colombia's most populous cities.
