On the morning of May 8th, Colombia was shaken by a devastating earthquake with a magnitude of 6.5. According to the Colombian Geological Service, it occurred at 8:08 a.m. local time. The epicenter was located 16 miles northeast of the town of Paratebueno in the Cundinamarca Department, and the focus was at a depth of 6 miles.
Several dozen people were injured as a result of the earthquake, which was felt in twenty of the country’s thirty-two departments, including Bogotá.
This event was one of the strongest and longest-lasting in the capital in recent memory. Sirens wailed in residential neighborhoods, and many residents ran into the streets in panic. In Bogotá, some building facades and structures were damaged. In addition, several transformers were damaged, and power outages were reported. A landslide occurred in the San Jorge neighborhood of the Uribe-Uribe district.
In the town of San Juan de Rioseco, in the state of Cundinamarca, power line poles and high-voltage cables were damaged.
Cracks also appeared on several roads and asphalt surfaces, including the national highway between Villavicencio and Yopal.
The most serious consequences were recorded in Paratebueno, a small town with a population of ten thousand. There, 250 residential houses and a school were almost completely destroyed. Fortunately, no children were harmed, as the earthquake struck on a Sunday. Electricity and water supply were cut off in the town.
In the neighboring municipality of Medina, one hundred homes were reported destroyed.
Many churches in the region were also damaged while morning Mass was taking place, with thousands of worshippers inside at the time.
According to seismologists, more than 250 aftershocks were recorded following the main quake.
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Official seismological services are slow to consolidate global earthquake data, and some events are recorded with underestimated magnitudes, while others disappear from public databases entirely. In this context, personal observations may be even more reliable.
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