Colombia Quake: Chocó's Dead Wait for the State to Arrive
The New York Times documented rescue flights into the region, where some villages had received no state response more than 72 hours after the initial tremor.
A magnitude 6.2 earthquake has left dozens dead and hundreds unreachable across Colombia's Chocó department, with aid workers and journalists accessing affected communities only by light aircraft after road infrastructure collapsed entirely. The New York Times documented rescue flights into the region, where some villages had received no state response more than 72 hours after the initial tremor.
Chocó is among the poorest departments in Colombia — a Pacific coastal region with virtually no paved road network, where the Colombian state has historically maintained its weakest presence. The earthquake did not create that abandonment. It exposed it.
Aid coordinators described reaching settlements where residents had already begun recovering bodies by hand, without equipment, without medical support. A single airstrip, carved into a hillside, became the only reliable entry point for three communities with a combined population of roughly 4,000 people.
Colombia's National Disaster Risk Management Unit confirmed that search and rescue operations remain active, but the logistical complexity of Chocó — dense jungle, no road access, rivers swollen by seasonal rain — has slowed deployment significantly, according to Reuters.
The death toll has not been formally confirmed. Local officials told Colombian media they expect it to rise as rescue teams reach the most isolated zones. For the communities of Chocó, a disaster that makes international news is still, in the end, a problem they will largely solve themselves.
