A powerful 7.4-magnitude earthquake jolted western Colombia early Monday, according to preliminary measurements from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), with shaking detected across dozens of major and regional cities spanning the South American nation.
The USGS pinpointed the earthquake’s epicenter in San José del Palmar, a municipality located in Colombia’s northwestern department of Chocó. The temblor struck at 7:34 a.m. local time — 8:34 a.m. Eastern Time in Miami — at a depth of 10 kilometers beneath the Earth’s surface, roughly 280 kilometers west of Colombia’s capital city Bogotá.
Local authorities have already confirmed casualties and damage in the hardest-hit region. Nubia Carolina Córdoba Curi, governor of Chocó department, stated that Quibdó, the department’s capital, has recorded multiple injured residents and severe structural damage to public and private buildings. She also voiced urgent concern over the risk of destructive aftershocks in the coming hours and days, a common secondary hazard following large seismic events.
Even hundreds of kilometers from the epicenter, the earthquake’s effects were clearly felt. In Bogotá, shaking was strong enough to trigger building alarms across the capital, prompting thousands of residents to evacuate multi-story structures and gather on city streets as a safety precaution. As of Monday morning, Bogotá Mayor Carlos Galán updated the public via social media platform X that no injuries or major structural failures had been reported in the capital, with only minor damage limited to small cracks in some buildings.
As emergency response teams begin assessing the full scope of damage and casualties across affected regions, this story remains developing and will be updated as new official information becomes available.