The humanitarian aid package, along with a specialized team in Mexican earthquake rescues, is ready to be sent to the ground zero in Colombia, hit by a 7.4 magnitude earthquake that shook the western part of the country leaving at least 224 dead. The president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, has assured that her Government is waiting for the Administration of the newly elected Abelardo de la Espriella to give the green light to the Secretariat of Defense to start the deployment of the military operation named Agrupamiento Cali. “We are waiting for the formal request from the Government of Colombia, but we are ready for the moment they tell us we can go help,” promised the president.
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Sheinbaum gave the order to the Armed Forces to start preparing all the material and mobilizing a team of rescuers who can leave immediately for Colombia to assist in the search and rescue of earthquake victims and its aftershocks, which already number half a hundred. Most of the deceased are concentrated in the metropolitan area of Pereira and serious damage has also occurred in the city of Cali. A little more than twenty-four hours after the tragedy, several citizens are still missing and the Colombian people are rushing to remove the rubble against the clock.
To support the task, Secretary Ricardo Trevilla Trejo has detailed that the team they have prepared is similar to the one sent to assist the Government of Venezuela after the earthquake on June 24. The command group consists of 255 military personnel, including medical staff and operators specialized in rescue and search tasks. They have also prepared canine pairs trained to track people trapped under collapsed buildings.
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The Army has also prepared an arsenal with four tons of medicines, 8,798 food packages, 13,890 baskets of basic foodstuffs, and eight and a half tons of tools so that the rescue team can operate. “Phones, radios, generators, tents… The idea would be that the personnel of this group and all the equipment, all material, the humanitarian aid that can be transported, speaking of food packages and medicines, would be transported in two Boeing planes, a Hercules plane and a Sparta plane,” detailed the head of the Secretariat of Defense. The aid package would land at Alfonso Bonilla Aragón International Airport, in Cali, this Tuesday.
For now, the Government of Colombia is focusing its efforts on the Coffee Axis, one of the areas most affected by the earthquake, where the dead number in the dozens. De la Espriella, who has only been in the Presidency for four days, has moved to the disaster center in Pereira to assess the damage and speak with officials and rescuers. Meanwhile, media and social networks are filled with faces of people who have not yet been located by their families.
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