Colombia earthquake recovery enters reconstruction phase

A month after a 7.4-magnitude earthquake hit Colombia, the country is shifting from rescue and emergency relief to a reconstruction effort that officials and analysts describe as both expensive and institutionally fragile.

El País reports that the quake killed more than 300 people and injured about 4,500, with roughly 100 people still missing and presumed dead. The disaster struck just days into the presidency of Abelardo de la Espriella, forcing the new administration to make crisis management its first defining test. In the initial two weeks, the focus was on pulling survivors from rubble and distributing aid, alongside a wave of citizen solidarity.

The harder phase is now beginning: rebuilding across four affected regions while the state faces a fiscal squeeze. El País puts the reconstruction bill at more than 30 trillion Colombian pesos—about $9.7 billion, or roughly 1.5% of GDP—with projections that the work could take up to five years. That scale pushes the government toward fundraising and financial engineering as much as bricks-and-mortar planning.

One sign of the state’s constraints is the prominent role assigned to large donors and corporate leaders. El País describes the president traveling to Chocó, near the epicenter, accompanied by wealthy individuals and heads of major companies, and pitching an investment-led “Marshall Plan” for a department long neglected by national politics and business. The private sector, the paper notes, has become a central pillar of the reconstruction simply because public funds are insufficient.

To channel money, the government has announced a mechanism called Fondo Milagro, intended to combine public and private resources and modeled on a fund used after Colombia’s 1999 earthquake. But El País reports that Fondo Milagro has not yet been formally created, and its structure and financing sources remain undefined. That gap matters because large inflows—especially in a rushed post-disaster environment—invite disputes over procurement, accountability and who gets prioritized.

Local officials have already complained that aid is concentrating in major cities while rural municipalities wait. El País cites the mayor of Alto Baudó, a jungle area of Chocó, saying supplies arrived only in small, irregular amounts. Euronews, reporting from Cali, showed residents marking the one-month anniversary with candles, flowers and white balloons, before visiting the debris of a collapsed residential complex.

The country’s reconstruction plan is still being described in broad strokes, while the destroyed buildings are still visible from the street.