Powerful Colombia earthquake kills at least 111

COLOMBIA: At least 111 people died when a massive earthquake shook western Colombia early on Monday, damaging buildings in several cities and injuring 87 other people, while more residents were trapped under the debris.

The earthquake came just few days after Abelardo De La Espriella took office as Colombia’s president, putting the new leadership in its first big test amid the memories of a devastating twin earthquake in neighbouring Venezuela in June.

"The national government has mobilised all its resources to rescue lives, assist communities and deliver aid wherever it is required," he said in his address to the nation around 1 p.m., declaring a national state of emergency in the country. "Our topmost priority now is to rescue those who are trapped under the rubble."

The 7.4 magnitude earthquake, according to the United States Geological Survey, hit 107 km below the surface of the earth near San Jose del Palmar in the department of Choco – a sparsely populated province in the Pacific coast of Colombia, but was felt in the major cities across the country.

The deaths seemed to have been mostly reported in the western province of Risaralda in the coffee-producing region of Colombia, as well as Cali, one of Colombia’s largest cities, although deaths could not yet have been confirmed by local officials.

"Everything collapsed. It was like an explosion. It was terrible," said Juan Carlos Osorio as he assisted in clearing the debris of a collapsed building in Cali on Caracol Television. "All of us neighbours are joining hands to make chains. We require heavy machinery as there are many who are trapped."

In a statement to the media, Colombia's civil aviation authority said flights were temporarily halted at airports located in Pereira, Manizales, Quibdo, Armenia, Cartago and Buenaventura pending inspections to ascertain if there were damages to the structures of the buildings.

While Colombia typically records thousands of quakes in a month, Suzan van der Lee, a seismologist from Northwestern University, suggested that the strength of the quake, its inland location and the movements of the plate were some of the factors that caused more serious destruction.