The earthquake that struck on Monday in Colombia was the country’s strongest recorded in the 21st century, according to Colombia’s Geological Service.

The sudden earthquake struck as neighboring northern Venezuela was working to recover from the devastation in La Guaira, a coastal area.

At Florida International University in Miami-Dade County, Dean Whitman, a geophysicist, said the proximity and timing of the earthquakes in Venezuela and Colombia were coincidental.

“There is no direct connection between them,” Whitman said. “They occurred in two types of systems.”

In Venezuela, the death toll was 6,300, there were about 60,000 injured, and the estimated total damage in Venezuela was about $37 billion.

The property damage and death toll are “going to be much less” in Colombia “than what we saw in Venezuela, because this earthquake occurred much deeper below the earth’s surface,” Whitman said.

The latest official toll on Monday night in Colombia: At least 132 dead and 570 injured.

In Medellin, the building where Laura Alvarez experienced the earthquake held up. She was in an eighth-floor apartment in downtown.

“I could almost feel like the bones of the building were rubbing against each other, and I could just hear all of these sounds,” Alvarez said.

In Bogotá, the high-altitude capital city of Colombia, the apartment building where Daniel Castellanos was when the earthquake struck also didn’t collapse.

“I was in my bed,” Castellanos said. “I opened my eyes, and the bed was moving.”

Related stories

Earthquake in Colombia likely caused less damage than June quakes in Venezuela, geophysicist says

About The Author

Cody Weddle

Andrea Torres