Colombia’s 7.4 Quake Buried Children While Politicians Tweeted Prayers

Seventy-three people are dead in Colombia and I want somebody to explain to me why we keep accepting this.

A 7.4 magnitude earthquake tore through western Colombia on Monday. The epicenter was San Jose Del Palmar, a town of 4,800 people in the Choco region. The U.S. Geological Survey says it hit at a depth of 66 miles. Colombia’s own Geological Service called it the most powerful quake in the country in the last decade. Forty people dead in Risaralda. Twenty-seven in Valle del Cauca. Four in Choco. Two in Manizales. And the governor of Valle del Cauca confirmed that at least three of those dead were children.

Children. I’m going to sit with that for a second because I have four of my own and I cannot imagine the phone call those parents got.

United States Geological Survey (Public domain) via Wikimedia Commons

Now here’s what makes my blood boil. Colombia’s president, a man named Abelardo de la Espriella, was sworn in over the weekend. Literally days on the job. And what does he do the moment the earth stops shaking? He holds a press conference to announce he has “personally taken charge” of the emergency response. Personally! The man hasn’t even found the bathroom in the presidential palace yet and he’s already cosplaying FEMA director. “You are not alone,” he said. “The state is present and taking action.” I have heard that exact phrase from every bureaucrat who ever showed up two days late to a disaster and then patted himself on the back for showing up at all.

Meanwhile, in Cali, a city of two million people, Mayor Alejandro Eder said residents were trapped in at least 19 collapsed buildings. Nineteen. In Pereira, the mayor, Mauricio Salazar, told a radio station that people were buried under “a massive quantity of collapsed buildings.” In Manizales, a tower of the neo-Gothic cathedral collapsed onto the nave. A cathedral. Stone walls that have stood for generations, and the ground swallowed them whole.

A taxi driver named Jorge Moncayo, 64 years old, said he watched plumes of dust shoot up across Cali as buildings came down. “My entire house shook,” he told reporters. “I’ve never lived through such a powerful earthquake. We’re thanking God we’re alive.” That man is not thanking the state. He is thanking God, because God showed up and the state did not.

Abelardo de la Espriella (CC0) via Wikimedia Commons

And here is our own Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, posting on X that the Trump administration “stands ready to support the people of Colombia.” Stands ready. What does that even mean? You’re standing. Congratulations. People are pulling their neighbors out of rubble with their bare hands and the most powerful government on earth is standing ready. I have seen more urgency in my neighborhood group chat when someone loses a dog.

Over 20 municipalities hit. Six airports shut down. Aftershocks of 2.8 and 4.8 still rolling through. And just weeks ago, back-to-back quakes in neighboring Venezuela killed more than 5,000 people. Five thousand. Families there are still digging through ruins looking for bodies. Does anybody in charge connect the dots here, or do they just wait for the next catastrophe to issue the next statement?

Colombia sits on the Ring of Fire. Everybody knows this. The scientists know it. The government knows it. Small tremors are so common they have a nickname for them: “temblores.” And yet buildings still went down like cardboard. In 1999, a 6.2 quake near Armenia killed over 1,100 people. That was 27 years ago. You would think a quarter century would be enough time to reinforce a few walls. You would think somebody would have made building codes a priority instead of an afterthought.

Diego F. Parra / Pexels

But that’s the thing, isn’t it? The people who write the regulations don’t live in the buildings that collapse. The people who cut the budgets don’t sleep under the roofs that cave in. And the children who died in Valle del Cauca this week never got a vote on any of it.

I don’t have a solution. I have four kids and a group chat and a whole lot of questions. But I know this: when the ground opens up and the buildings fall, it is not the politicians who pull people out. It is the neighbors. It is always the neighbors. And the least the bureaucrats could do is stop pretending they got there first.