Colombian woman rescued alive 36 hours after deadly 7.4-magnitude earthquake

A 32-year-old woman named Daniela Largo has been pulled alive from the rubble of a collapsed building in Pereira, Colombia, 36 hours after a 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck the country on Monday morning. The ten-hour rescue operation required firefighters and disaster response teams to bore two tunnels through four concrete slabs before freeing her.

How she was found and rescued

A local resident heard Largo calling for help beneath the wreckage and alerted emergency services. Rescuers located her using a small camera lowered into the debris. Teams from the Pereira and Bogotá fire departments, together with a national police disaster response unit, worked for ten hours to cut through the rubble. They first created a narrow tunnel to supply her with oxygen, then bored a second tunnel to extract her. Her 12-year-old son was waiting at home, according to her mother. Colombian President Gustavo de la Espriella called the rescue "news which fills us with hope."

Scale of the disaster

The earthquake struck at 07:34 local time (12:34 GMT) on Monday, with its epicentre near San José del Palmar in the Chocó province. Shaking lasted between 90 seconds and two minutes, and more than 100 aftershocks followed. Across Colombia, at least 265 people have been confirmed dead and 496 remain missing. The city of Pereira recorded 79 deaths, with 92 buildings collapsed, 15 people still trapped, and 37 others unaccounted for. In Cali, 95 people died and more than 200 were initially trapped; authorities imposed a night-time curfew and deployed soldiers to maintain order, with 87 survivors having been pulled from the wreckage so far.