At 3 a.m., when most Colombians were asleep, the earth shook, opening the gates of the hell that resided in their bowels. The almanac marked December 13, 1979, when the worst earthquake in the country’s history occurred. It was actually a sequence of three strong earthquakeswith epicenter 640 kilometers south of Bogotá. The first occurred at 2:59 a.m., the second at 3:02 a.m. and the last two minutes later. Just a few days later, the balance of the disaster could be determined relatively precisely: More than 450 dead, half a thousand missing, around fifteen thousand injuredabout two hundred thousand people without shelter and material losses amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars. The earthquake was followed by a devastating tsunami.
The real thing intensity The earthquake caused discussions for months: While the seismographs in Quito, Ecuador, recorded a magnitude of 7.1 degrees on the Richter scale, those at the Vienna Geophysical Institute – much further away but also with more precise instruments – showed 8.1, one degree more. The director of the Geophysical Institute of Los Andes, Priest Jesús Emilio Ramírez, put aside the numbers and tried to make himself understood to the public. “The energy released by this quake was greater than that of November 23,” he told reporters. He was referring to an earthquake that had occurred just three weeks earlier, in which 44 people died, about five hundred were injured, and material damage was estimated at more than one hundred million dollars.
Beyond the debate over intensity, the cause of the earthquake was determined by the Canadian Seismological Institute, whose experts reported that it opened at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. In addition, they issued a worrying warning: “The tremors could continue until closure,” they said.
The residents of Tumaco and El Charco, two towns on the border with Ecuador, were unaware of this data. They simply felt the effects firsthand: They experienced the catastrophe because that was where the earthquake hit hardest. For them, the magnitude of the earthquake was measured on a scale that began with surprise and panic, continued with the deaths of family members, neighbors and friends, and continued with the desperate task of rescuing people trapped beneath the rubble. The two communities were isolated The rest of the country lives in an endless spiral in which all services are destroyed Hunger, thirst and scorching heat which made things worse.
The coastal town of Tumaco was destroyed. The next day, the first journalists who could reach the area began sending out cables containing heartbreaking testimonies from survivors. “Mónica Delmar Sabogal was already tied to a stretcher in a field hospital don’t want to live. He attempted suicide by removing the cannula through which he was given serum. She tried twice before the doctor gave the order to tie her up. She has no interest in continuing to live; someone told her that her mother died in the earthquake. “Mónica lived alone with her, there is no one left in the world,” said the telegram from the envoy of an international agency, reproduced by the evening newspaper in Argentina. The reason.
“You have just identified a man, his name was Julio Martínez,” the text continued. “Next to him, they left two more bodies covered with a tarpaulin. They are smaller and look like children Pillar of light It fell on them and all three died instantly.”
The chronicle, which arrived in Bogotá from the pilot of a military helicopter from Tumaco, ended as follows: “Tumaco no longer exists. Only the skeletons of a few houses remain. In the makeshift civil defense center, a simple tent set up on the square, no one wants to talk about numbers, but the dead are counted in the dozens. The few doctors who have arrived do not give up and try to save the lives of the injured who were rescued from the rubble by the rescue workers or the neighbors themselves. At the time of sending this message, night is approaching and the feeling is in the air that as the daylight dwindles, so will the hope of rescuing more survivors.
Rescue measures had to wait, which made the situation even worse for those affected. As soon as the earthquake occurred, the Colombian Army and the Colombian Navy tried to send several squads from Cali and Bogotá to the scene of the disaster, but it was useless: the victims could neither be helped nor rescued because the Roads were closed and it was very difficult to send helicopters and boats. As a result, entire cities became cemeteries.
In many cases the military was able to arrive when it was too late. “We had to go out and kill dogs to stop them from entering the ruins and eating the corpses or attacking the people who were still trapped but alive. It felt like a….” Horror film. While some of us dedicated ourselves to clearing rubble, organizing field hospitals and preventing looting, which fortunately did not occur, others had to use our weapons to sacrifice the desperate and out-of-control animals. The situation worsened as the days went by when we realized that in some isolated populations there were people who were very sick from eating dogs and cats. I think some of these dogs had previously eaten rotting corpses… You can’t imagine what that was like,” said Navy Captain Darío Márquez upon his return to Bogota.
A radio journalist from the Todelar network told from Tumaco how hundreds of people walked the streets looking for survivors and getting water. “Fear and hunger lead to the looting of the few warehouses that remain standing and those that have collapsed, as people wander through the rubble in search of a can of preserves… There is no longer even water to drink,” he described.
When twelve hours had passed since the tremors, Dora Urrego, civil protection coordinator for El Pasto, another affected city, made a dramatic assessment of the situation: “This disaster destroyed a quarter of Colombia’s territory. Everything is here.” Misery, death and despair. The lack of communication has also prevented us from speeding up the deployment of rescue groups, food and medicine,” he explained in a broken voice.
The catastrophic effects of the earthquake were compounded by a tsunami in the Pacific that caused San Juan Island to disappear and swallowed the two hundred people – fishing families – who lived there. One chronicle tells of a “true miracle” of the eight members of the Quiñones family who saved their lives after the great tsunami wave swept the coast and destroyed their house.
Luis Quiñones, his wife and their six children they lived from fishing and they lived in a house built on a floor of logs supported by poles, on the beach, near Tumaco. Every morning, at sunrise, Luis and his five older children would get into two boats and go out to sea to fish with an old net, which they would then drag to the beach with whatever fish they could catch. Later, the whole family cleaned and prepared the fish to take to the city, where they sold it or traded it for basic necessities.
In the early morning of December 12th, Luis was already awake when he felt the earth shake. The house swayed on the piles but did not collapse because they were sunk deep into the sand. Everyone woke up in fear, but stayed where they were. No one tried to leave the house and that saved them. “Seconds later, a huge wave hit the shore and swept away everything in its path. This time the Quiñones’ house offered no resistance.” The force of the water caused the poles to break like they were toothpicks, but the boards were well attached and held up without coming loose,” the article says.
The story told in this way seems like a fiction so exaggerated that it is unbelievable, but the chronicler not only took note of the story that Luis Quiñones himself told him, but also confirmed the last part with the crew members of the Colombian navy boat that rescued them from the sea. The wave played with the floor of the house but failed to destroy it and the twelve family members continued to cling to the floorboards. turned into a raft. They found her three hundred meters from the shore, barely injured, almost unharmed. Although they lost everything they had except their lives, the Quiñones’ nightmare was over.
When President Julio César Turbay Ayala appeared before television cameras hours after the earthquake, most of his compatriots did not yet know the true extent of the quake that had shaken the country’s coast that morning. “In these moments of grief and pain, Colombians must remain more united and whole than ever before. I call on all of you, without exception, to work with our compatriots who were victims of the earthquake. I am convinced that we can once again demonstrate our strength and solidarity. The government has taken all the measures at its disposal to help the victims and will do everything necessary to rebuild the affected cities. We know that in this difficult task are not alone. All the people of Colombia are with us “It,” said the president in a predictable speech full of platitudes that seemed almost modeled on an imaginary handbook of speeches for political leaders in the face of natural disasters.
Apart from the President’s words, the whole of Colombia remained in suspense for almost a month, not only because of the endless tasks of rescuing corpses, but also because the great earthquake was followed by numerous aftershocks that continually renewed the panic.
Tumaco, the city wiped off the map, rose from its ashes. It is currently the most important Colombian oil port on the Pacific Ocean and the second largest nationally after Coveñas. It is also one of the most attractive tourist destinations in the country, with spectacular beaches such as El Morro, El Bajito and Boca Grande, as well as others near the mouth of the Mira River, Milagros, Bocana Nueva and Terán. Every year, a week before Easter, thousands of tourists travel to the city to attend the Fire Carnival, a veritable celebration that, paradoxically, always remembers in some way the devastating earthquake that destroyed the city.
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