Colombia searches for its missing after a powerful earthquake kills more than 100

Search and res­cue ef­forts were un­der­way ear­ly Tues­day in dozens of cities and towns in west­ern Colom­bia af­ter a pow­er­ful earth­quake struck the re­gion, killing at least 111 peo­ple and leav­ing many trapped un­der the de­bris of dam­aged and de­stroyed build­ings.

Mon­day’s 7.4 mag­ni­tude earth­quake rat­tled Cali, Quib­do, Pereira and nu­mer­ous oth­er cities and towns. Around 1,600 build­ings were re­port­ed dam­aged or col­lapsed. Sol­diers, res­cue per­son­nel and fam­i­lies picked through the rub­ble, re­mov­ing and pass­ing large pieces of con­crete by hand down lines of vol­un­teers.

Pres­i­dent Abelar­do de la Es­priel­la said Mon­day af­ter­noon at least 111 peo­ple had died.

Fam­i­lies post­ed in­for­ma­tion about miss­ing loved ones on cit­i­zen-run web­sites. By Mon­day night, more than 2,700 peo­ple had been re­port­ed miss­ing.

Dana Car­oli­na Zamo­ra post­ed an im­age of her miss­ing 60-year-old un­cle, Miguel Án­gel Zamo­ra, cradling his dog. The farmer was liv­ing in a rur­al area of El Cairo, not far from the epi­cen­ter of the quake in San Jose Del Pal­mar.

Lo­cal au­thor­i­ties said 80% of El Cairo, a town of about 7,000 peo­ple, was dam­aged. Zamo­ra said she wor­ried be­cause her un­cle lived in a tra­di­tion­al but frag­ile house made of sticks and mud.

“We are afraid. We hope that is not the case, that he is all right and that it is on­ly a com­mu­ni­ca­tion fail­ure. But we haven’t heard any­thing from him,” Zamo­ra said.

Choco, the re­gion sur­round­ing the quake’s epi­cen­ter, is one of the poor­est and most ne­glect­ed re­gions of Colom­bia, of­ten be­set by war­ring armed groups. Much of Choco is ac­ces­si­ble on­ly by boat, through the jun­gle or by air­plane. Lit­tle was known about the ex­tent of the dam­age there.

De la Es­priel­la trav­eled to Choco’s cap­i­tal, Quib­do, on Mon­day night to as­sess the dam­age and an­nounced he had mo­bi­lized “the en­tire mil­i­tary and po­lice ap­pa­ra­tus” to re­spond, de­ploy­ing en­gi­neers, res­cue work­ers and search dogs. He an­nounced rental sub­si­dies for those whose homes were dam­aged while they un­der­go re­pairs.

“Choco will nev­er again be the ‘land of the for­got­ten,’” he said.

The earth­quake presents the first ma­jor test for de la Es­priel­la, who was sworn in as Colom­bia’s leader on Fri­day. De la Es­priel­la is a di­vi­sive fig­ure be­cause of his pledge of an all-out crack­down on crim­i­nal groups.

The U.S. State De­part­ment an­nounced it would pro­vide $15.5 mil­lion for emer­gency shel­ter, food and oth­er aid. Gov­ern­ments across Latin Amer­i­ca al­so lined up to help.

The earth­quake left many in the An­dean na­tion un­nerved af­ter two back-to-back quakes dev­as­tat­ed neigh­bor­ing Venezuela in late June, de­stroy­ing hun­dreds of build­ings and killing more than 6,300 peo­ple.

Many Colom­bians were on­ly be­gin­ning to grap­ple with the dis­as­ter’s longer-term con­se­quences.

Móni­ca Sánchez owns a small com­pa­ny that makes work uni­forms. Her home city, Pereira, was one of the worst hit, and a wall in­side the fac­to­ry col­lapsed. Sánchez and her 12 work­ers were able to get out­side just in time.

“It was shock­ing — the city fell down around us,” she said.

—BO­GO­TA, Colom­bia (AP)

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Sto­ry by ASTRID SUÁREZ, MANUEL RUE­DA and MEGAN JANET­SKY | The As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Mea­gan Janet­sky re­port­ed from Mex­i­co City.