Major earthquake strikes Colombia's Pacific region

Earthquake

Severity score68 / 100 · High

How the score is calculated

The score starts at 8. It adds points from recorded affected, deaths, displaced and casualty counts, plus terms found in the story title, event type or status. For each count, only its highest matching band is used.

Affected people: 1–999: +5 · 1,000–9,999: +12 · 10,000–99,999: +20 · 100,000–999,999: +28 · 1 million+: +35
Deaths: 1–9: +8 · 10–99: +14 · 100–999: +22 · 1,000+: +30
Displaced people: 1–9,999: +6 · 10,000–99,999: +12 · 100,000+: +18
Casualties: 100 or more: +8
Story wording: +10 for terms such as catastrophe, famine, war, conflict, major earthquake, mass casualty or critical. Otherwise, +5 for active, ongoing, emergency, outbreak, cyclone or hurricane.

Score bands: Watch 0–24 · Moderate 25–49 · High 50–74 · Critical 75–100. Scores are capped at 100. Missing or unparseable figures add no points.

This is a rule-based WorldsAid triage indicator, not an official or independently validated classification. It does not account for recency or local context, and it can understate events with incomplete reporting. Check the linked sources.

Last verified4 Oct 2026

Date: 10 Aug 2026
Status: ONGOING RESPONSE · OCHA FLASH UPDATE 013
Aid Zone: SOUTH AMERICA
Countries: Colombia
Agency: OCHA Colombia / UNGRD / Colombian Red Cross / IFRC

In brief

What happenedA magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck western Colombia at 7:34 a.m. local time on 10 August 2026, with the epicentre near San José del Palmar in Chocó.
Reported impactAffected persons: 314,751 · Deaths: 329 · Injured: 4,600
What help is neededLandslides and damaged roads isolated some of the worst-affected communities, while Colombian Red Cross and humanitarian teams continued shelter, health, water and protection support.

What changed

Updated verified snapshot

This record was first dated 2026-08-10 and last verified 2026-10-04T00:00:00Z.

Situation

A magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck western Colombia at 7:34 a.m. local time on 10 August 2026, with the epicentre near San José del Palmar in Chocó. OCHA Colombia's Flash Update 013, published on 17 September in Spanish and 18 September in English, retains the national-authority balance of 329 deaths, 4,600 injured people, 247 people missing and 314,751 people affected. The previous WorldsAid snapshot, sourced from IFRC, reported at least 176 deaths; it is preserved below as the earlier dated observation. Landslides and damaged roads isolated some of the worst-affected communities, while Colombian Red Cross and humanitarian teams continued shelter, health, water and protection support. IFRC's CHF 25 million Emergency Appeal targets approximately 24,000 people over 24 months. Human-impact figures remain provisional and may change as national authorities reconcile assessments.

Linked charities and agencies

IFRC · Organisation profile
OCHA · Organisation profile

WorldsAid verification

A WorldsAid editor reviewed this record against 7 attributed sources, cleaned feed formatting and checked the crisis, place and reporting date. 11 human-impact figures were separated from the narrative and dated where the source allowed. Earlier observations remain in the evidence history instead of being silently overwritten.

Verified figures

Affected persons: 314,751 retained at 2026-10-04T00:00:00Z
Deaths: 329 retained at 2026-10-04T00:00:00Z
Injured: 4,600 retained at 2026-10-04T00:00:00Z
Reported injured: 4,600 · national-authority balance retained in OCHA Flash Update 013 retained at 2026-10-04T00:00:00Z
People missing: 247 · national-authority balance retained in OCHA Flash Update 013 retained at 2026-10-04T00:00:00Z
People affected: 314,751 · national-authority balance retained in OCHA Flash Update 013 retained at 2026-10-04T00:00:00Z
People targeted by IFRC appeal: 24,000 retained at 2026-10-04T00:00:00Z
IFRC emergency appeal: CHF 25 million retained at 2026-10-04T00:00:00Z
Earthquake magnitude: 7.4 retained at 2026-10-04T00:00:00Z
Response timeframe: 24 months retained at 2026-10-04T00:00:00Z
IFRC appeal update: 24,000 people targeted · CHF 10 million requirement · 66.9% funded · 4 October 2026 retained at 2026-10-04T00:00:00Z

What we knew when

2026-08-10WorldsAid record entered the retained historical dataset.
2026-10-04T00:00:00Z24,000 PEOPLE TARGETED · CHF 10 MILLION REQUIREMENT · 66.9% FUNDED · 4 OCTOBER 2026 preserved as a dated, source-linked observation. Source
2026-08-31Earlier IFRC observation retained preserved as a dated, source-linked observation. Source
2026-09-17OCHA Colombia Flash Update 013 · national-authority balance retained preserved as a dated, source-linked observation. Source

Earlier figures are never replaced by later values; additional observations are retained as new ledger entries.

Provenance

This page renders the last verified WorldsAid cache directly in HTML. It does not treat generated summaries as primary evidence.

Cached dataset: worldsai_drup771.sql.gz

Record integrity:

Verified

SHA-256 436c74099e712ece7527c0a8069119c95997cd29bcfec37efcad767afb1335ec

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