BOGOTA—At least 111 people were killed and 87 injured after a magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck western Colombia on Monday, collapsing buildings, damaging infrastructure and trapping people beneath rubble, authorities said.
President Abelardo De La Espriella declared a national state of emergency and said the government had deployed resources to affected areas, with rescuing people trapped under collapsed structures the immediate priority. Preliminary casualty figures were announced by the president as rescue operations continued.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake struck at a depth of about 107 km (66 miles). Colombia's Geological Service described it as the strongest earthquake recorded in the country during the 21st century.
The epicenter was near San Jose del Palmar in Choco province, about 400 km (250 miles) west of Bogota. Choco Governor Nubia Carolina Cordoba reported 12 deaths and 84 injuries in the largely rural province, while the heaviest casualties appeared to be in Risaralda, in Colombia's coffee-growing region.
Pereira, the capital of Risaralda, suffered extensive damage, with rescue teams searching collapsed buildings for survivors. Reuters-verified video showed a four-story building collapsing in Pereira, while footage from Manizales showed part of the city's landmark neo-Gothic cathedral falling into the street.
Rescue workers, police and volunteers searched through debris by hand and used trucks to remove rubble. Mauricio Andrade, a firefighter in Cali, told Reuters his team had rescued two women and two children from a collapsed building and was preparing to reach more people.
Communications outages hampered reports from areas close to the epicenter, with some communities still without cellphone service hours after the quake. Colombia's civil aviation authority suspended operations at several airports in the west, including those serving Pereira, Manizales, Quibdo, Armenia, Cartago and Buenaventura, while engineers inspected facilities for structural damage.
The Colombian Geological Service said 21 aftershocks had been recorded by late Monday and warned that additional tremors were likely. Colombia lies in a seismically active region, and its coffee-growing area was devastated by a magnitude 6.2 earthquake in 1999 that killed more than 1,000 people.
Authorities were continuing search-and-rescue operations as teams assessed damage and worked to reach people reported trapped beneath collapsed buildings.
