More than 100 hours after a magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck Colombia on August 10, rescuers were still pulling people out alive. "A three-year-old girl and a 75-year-old man have been pulled alive from the rubble days after Colombia's earthquake," Al Jazeera reported, under the headline "3-year-old girl rescued 100 hours after Colombia earthquake" [1].
As the search went on, the disaster moved into diplomacy. President Abelardo de la Espriella "said he had a 'friendly and cordial' conversation with his supporter Donald Trump, in which he asked him to suspend planned tariffs on the quake-hit country," Al Jazeera reported on August 15 [1]. The exchange sits under the outlet's headline, "Colombia asks Trump to suspend tariffs as country reels from earthquake" [1]. The ask is pointed: the government being asked to pause the tariffs is the one whose trade policy would otherwise land on a country in the middle of digging out.
The human toll is still being counted. Al Jazeera's ongoing coverage put the running figures near 265 dead, more than 3,500 wounded, and over 9,550 homes destroyed. Those numbers are a moving count carried across the outlet's earthquake coverage, and, on the live index, they appeared as a summary rather than a fixed, quotable line; they trace to reporting around August 13 and should be read as provisional.
What is firm is the shape of the week: two people alive against long odds, a country counting its dead, and a trade negotiation running alongside the rescue. The rescues will fade from the front page faster than the question of whether Washington pauses the tariffs, and that answer will follow the survivors home.
