A 32-year-old woman has been rescued after spending 36 hours trapped beneath rubble following a powerful earthquake that struck western Colombia.
Daniela Largo was pulled from a collapsed building in the city of Pereira after a 10-hour rescue operation involving firefighters, police and emergency teams from Bogotá.
Rescuers reached Largo after digging a tunnel beneath four large concrete slabs that had trapped her.
Her mother told AFP that a local resident first heard Largo calling for help from underneath the rubble. Emergency workers then used a small camera to locate her.
The rescue operation proved challenging because four heavy concrete slabs blocked direct access to Largo.
Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella celebrated the rescue on social media, describing it as “news which fills us with hope”.
Firefighters initially dug a tunnel from above to provide her with oxygen. They then created a second tunnel from below, which eventually allowed them to reach and free her.
Largo’s mother said her daughter’s 12-year-old son was waiting for her at home.
The rescue comes as emergency teams continue searching for survivors following the 7.4-magnitude earthquake, which has killed at least 188 people, according to official figures.
Pereira, located in Colombia’s coffee-growing region, has recorded 79 deaths, making it the second-worst affected city after Cali, where 95 people have died, according to figures from the Association of Colombian Capital Cities.
At least 92 buildings have collapsed in Pereira, while 15 people are still believed to be trapped and another 37 have been reported missing.
In Cali, Colombia’s third-largest city, more than 200 people were still trapped as of Tuesday afternoon. Authorities have so far rescued 87 people from the rubble.
The city’s mayor imposed a night-time curfew and deployed soldiers to patrol some of the worst-affected areas to allow rescue operations to continue safely.
“We need to ensure that the rescue work can be carried out safely,” the mayor said, adding that there was still hope of finding more survivors.
The earthquake struck at 07:34 local time on Monday, with its epicentre near San José del Palmar in Chocó province.
The powerful tremor was felt across a wide area, with seismometers close to the epicentre recording shaking that lasted between 90 seconds and two minutes.
More than 100 aftershocks have been recorded since the main earthquake.
Rescue teams remain deployed across the worst-hit areas as relatives continue searching for loved ones and authorities work to establish the full scale of the destruction.
