Magnitude 7.4 Earthquake – 5 km S of San José del Palmar, Colombia

Was on the 6th floor of a tower. Shaking lasted almost 2 minutes. There was no damage as far as I could tell (Medellín) but they still evacuated everyone to inspect the building. City is in a bit of chaos, people are fine but unsettled, and the comms lines are clogged with people presumably calling their families.

Was a bit tense to see my phone alerts going off over and over, continually increasing the estimate of the earthquake strength, followed by the shaking getting worse.

For people who don't know, those phone alerts give you literally like 5 seconds of heads up. By the time I finished reading the first message, the shaking had already started. And I got the message while I was holding my phone and using it.

Didn't feel it but apparently it lasted several minutes and there was a lot of panic here in Bogota. Could see lots of people going out of their apartments in pijamas.

Also TIL that in 2023, while in a smaller earthquake webcam streamers (adult entretainers) went out of their apartments in lingerie.

The national paper has a bunch of articles above the fold: https://www.eltiempo.com . 20+ confirmed dead in Pereira, a third-tier city with population of ~500,000. Many wounded.

I have family in this area in Valle del Cauca. We've heard from my immediate family and they're okay, but communication is spotty and we don't have a great sense of how bad things are yet. We fly into Matecaña International Airport in Pereira and it looks like the terminal had major damage and at least a few deaths. Shocking and horrifying stuff.

Statistical anomaly detected: this morning I woke up from an earth quake in my dream. It was powerful enough to really sway the buildings and room I was in. Im in Texas though, but >= 7.0 earthquakes only happen a handful of times a year.

e: first time I dreamed of an earthquake

Thankfully, it's a fairly deep (>100km) subduction zone earthquake. That means less immediate damage from ground acceleration than it could be from an earthquake of that size. However, a very large area may have seen significant liquefaction of soils in valleys and landslides on steep slopes. I'd wager we won't hear about most of the damage initially in the press.

A few days ago, Egypt experienced its most violent earthquake in a long time. It occurred near the Suez Canal and lasted for about 30 seconds. It was absolutely terrifying.

Was pretty intense. Buildings and windows shaking.

seems there is a lot of activity in south america

Is this related to the one in Venezuela earlier this year?

Is there something like a domino theory for earth quakes? Like first some stress releases in Venezuella, then the same stress travells further up the boundary, triggering a earth quake in a different region? Working its way up the plate boundary towards a big one like a fuse?

Colombia has been doing some rocking and rolling lately.

I read the title as 5 km S of San Jose (as in bay area) at first