Colombia's earthquake has killed more than 200 people, the government said on Wednesday, a toll that has close to doubled in the two days since this desk last counted it. When Pixel Politics reported the disaster on Tuesday, the confirmed dead stood somewhere between 111 and 132 depending on which outlet carried it. The figure Colombia's government gave Al Jazeera on Wednesday is more than 200 dead, alongside 2,595 injured [1]. The magnitude 7.4 quake that struck western Colombia on Monday, the strongest the country has recorded in a century, has since been followed by more than 100 aftershocks [1].
The count that has not settled is the one for the missing. Colombia's government lists 195 people as officially unaccounted for [1]. Civilian-run databases that track the disappeared put the number close to 4,000 [1]. That gap, 195 against roughly 4,000, is the widest uncertainty in the disaster, and it is the same gap this desk flagged on Tuesday, when no authority had explained how the citizen lists carrying counts of 2,000 to 2,700 were compiled. The two figures are printed here side by side, with their sources, because averaging them would invent a number no authority has issued, and because the space between them is measured in families.
The government has answered the scale of the disaster with the instruments a state reaches for first. It declared three days of national mourning, with flags lowered to half-staff at official buildings and at Colombian embassies worldwide [1]. It declared a state of emergency, and it promised rent subsidies for families whose homes were destroyed [1].
The destruction is concentrated in the cities rather than at the epicenter. Cali, Colombia's third-largest city, is the worst hit, with Pereira, Manizales and Quibdo also heavily damaged and Choco, the department nearest the epicenter, among the affected areas [1].
The response is being directed by a government that Al Jazeera and CBS identify as headed by President Abelardo de la Espriella, who by that reporting took office only days before the quake, on August 7 [1]. This desk carries the name as attributed reporting rather than as a confirmed entry in our records: the office-holder reaches us through the coverage, and by that account the earthquake is his administration's first major crisis.
International help has been pledged in specific sums. The United States has committed $15.5 million, the European Union $2.3 million, Mexico has sent search and health workers, and El Salvador has flown in two planes carrying 100 tonnes of aid [1].
On Tuesday this desk wrote that until an official casualty authority published a methodology, every number in this disaster should be read with its source and its timestamp attached. A day later the confirmed dead has crossed 200 and the missing lists still range from 195 to nearly 4,000, which means the true scale is still being measured. The families in Cali, Pereira and the towns around the epicenter are the people living inside that range.
