The earthquake in Colombia has more than 250 victims. A depth of 110 kilometres could have muted the damage, but walls seven centimetres thick decided it

The magnitude 7.4 quake struck 110 kilometres below the surface, which dampens the damage. Even so 240 people died, most of them in Cali, 166 km from the epicentre. How Colombia builds decided the rest.

Loosely tracking

0/6 fulfilled ⏳ 6 pending tracking since 21.8.2026 check by 10.11.2026

The article that started it

Zemetrasenie v Kolumbii má vyše 250 obetí. Hĺbka 110 kilometrov mohla škody tlmiť, rozhodli však steny hrubé sedem centimetrov

Otras s magnitúdou 7,4 vznikol 110 kilometrov pod povrchom, čo škody tlmí. Zomrelo aj tak 240 ľudí a najviac v Cali, 166 km od epicentra. Rozhodlo…

17.8.2026

What we are still watching

**This is the fifth and final update wave for this text.** We continue to follow the aftermath of the earthquake, but what comes next — the reconstruction, the final toll and the political dispute over building standards — will be covered in a separate article so that the list of updates stays readable.
Whether the official national toll and the summed municipal reports converge, and on what number. The gap between 181 and 240 is not a detail: the administrative picture of the disaster depends on it, and so does part of the compensation for victims' families.
What happens with more than 3,000 reports of missing people. They may be people under the rubble, people out of contact, or duplicate and unverified reports, and those categories will separate out in the coming days.
How the aftershocks go. There were more than 70 on the first day, and damaged but standing buildings are most vulnerable to them.
Whether de la Espriella raises the issue of strengthening existing buildings, or sticks to rebuilding what was destroyed. The 1998 standard protects new buildings, not older ones — and those make up most of Colombia's building stock.
How many of the collapsed buildings were built after 1998. That will be the hardest test of whether the problem is the old stock, or also how the standard is enforced.

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The earthquake in Colombia has more than 250 victims. A depth of 110 kilometres could have muted the damage, but walls seven centimetres thick decided it

The article that started it

What we are still watching

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