Damage Assessments Underway in Colombia Following Deadly Earthquake
Nick Brown| August 12, 2026 A pre-earthquake coffee-growing landscape near El Águila, Valle del Cauca. Photo by Hoako/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0. A magnitude 7.4 earthquake shook coffee-growing regions of western Colombia on Monday, killing at least 250 people, while damage assessments are ongoing. The quake hit at 7:34 a.m. local time Monday, Aug. 10, with an epicenter near San José del Palmar in the rural Chocó department, west of Bogotá, according to theU.S. Geological Survey. News outlets have reported severe damage to buildings and infrastructure throughout neighboring coffee-producing areas, withReuters reportingat least 254 deaths as of Tuesday morning, including 101 in Pereira, the capital of the major coffee-producing department of Risaralda. Damage has been reported in and around the Eje Cafetero — the departments of Caldas, Risaralda and Quindío — as well as Valle del Cauca, Antioquia and Chocó. A pre-earthquake view of El Cairo, Valle del Cauca.Photo by Herrero Enrique/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Germán Bahamón, general manager of theFederación Nacional de Cafeteros de Colombia(FNC), said on social media that the organization was working directly with coffee-growing communities to assess damage to farms and rural infrastructure. No comprehensive coffee-sector damage figures have yet been released. “Today, the priority is saving lives,” Bahamón wrote on X (translated from Spanish). According to areport from La República, the FNC’s director of social development, Guillermo Arcila, is leading a household-by-household damage assessment carried out with the federation’s technical team, departmental committees and extension service, assessing harm to homes and coffee infrastructure. Gustavo Gómez, president of the Colombian coffee exporters’ associationAsoexport, told Bloomberg that coffeeexports are “currently paused,”with landslides and blockages — including around tunnels on the Cali-Buenaventura highway — disrupting access to Buenaventura, the country’s main coffee port. Oliver Broster, senior manager for coffee analysis at commodity pricing company Expana,told theFinancial Timesthat
Nick Brown| August 12, 2026 A pre-earthquake coffee-growing landscape near El Águila, Valle del Cauca.
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