A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Rescue teams in western Colombia are working to find people trapped after a powerful 7.4 earthquake caused widespread destruction.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
More than 130 people were killed by the quake on Monday. Authorities say that number is likely to rise. Thousands of people were killed in an earthquake in neighboring Venezuela a little more than a month ago.
MARTÍNEZ: Reporter Manuel Rueda is in Bogota. Manuel, how widespread is the damage from this earthquake?
MANUEL RUEDA, BYLINE: The damage is basically along four cities in the west of Colombia and some small towns in between. The hardest-hit places have been Cali, Pereira, Manizales and Quibdo in the Choco region. And these are places with very different landscapes. So Choco is sparsely populated. There's a lot of rainforest there and few roads. And then towards the south, it gets more mountainous. It's the area known as the Coffee Axis, and the mountains also present a risk of landslides.
So that's where the city of Pereira is located. The mayor there said that there's at least 15 buildings where people could still be trapped under the rubble. He said that at least 55 people were killed in that city. And the biggest of the cities that has been affected is Cali, where the mayor said that 40 buildings were destroyed and confirmed the deaths of at least 15 people.
MARTÍNEZ: Wow. OK. How are rescue efforts going?
RUEDA: Well, they're already going on around the clock. In Cali, the mayor said they managed to pull 37 people out of the rubble on Monday. They still have teams working there. However, you know, Cali, you can get aid quickly because there is a major airport there. Some areas, it's going to take more time to get aid - for example, in the Choco region, where the roads are in bad shape and where there's many small towns that don't have an airport or that might even be tough to get to with a helicopter. So they're going to have to wait for trucks to bring aid.
You know, that's the case in San Jose del Palmar, which is the town closest to the epicenter. And it's just located in a very remote area on top of a mountain ridge with no airport access whatsoever.
MARTÍNEZ: So given how many Colombians have lost their homes, I mean, how are the survivors coping and dealing with what they have to deal with now?
RUEDA: Yeah. You have many people sleeping outdoors because they're afraid of going back into their buildings because the structures have been seriously damaged. Also, in Cali, they turned a baseball stadium into a shelter, as well as a smaller arena. In Manizales, a basketball arena is now a shelter.
One thing that's particular to Colombia, perhaps, is that in some of these cities, they've declared curfews because they're afraid of the activities of criminals and possible looting. So in Cali and Pereira, for instance, there are curfews from around 8 p.m. to 6 a.m., which is when the sun comes back up in Colombia. And the president of Colombia has been visiting some of these areas and also offering some solutions. Like, for example, in Choco, he offered a rent subsidy to families that have been affected by the earthquake and have lost their homes, which - just in Choco, they estimate it's 1,400 families.
MARTÍNEZ: All right. That's reporter Manuel Rueda in Bogota. Thank you very much.
RUEDA: Thanks. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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