Pereira Earthquake: Where to Donate, What Is Open, and How to Get Help

A magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck Colombia at 7:34 a.m. on Monday 10 August 2026, centered near San José del Palmar in Chocó. Pereira is one of the worst hit cities. This page is what we have been able to verify, with the date attached to every line.

Read this before anything else. Everything below is at least a few hours old, and in a disaster a status can invert in an hour. Every entry says where it came from and when. Where we could not confirm something, we say so instead of guessing, because a wrong address sends someone across a broken city for nothing. Call before you travel.

Last full verification pass: 12 August 2026.

If you only read one thing

You need to	Do this
Get emergency help	123, or 119 for Bomberos de Pereira. If a call will not connect, send an SMS
Give things	Any of the seven Alcaldía collection points, 8am to 5pm. They are municipal business centres, not cafés
Give money from abroad	GlobalGiving, World Central Kitchen (operating in Pereira) or Save the Children
Give blood	Hospital San Jorge, Carrera 4 #24-88, Mon to Sat 8am to 5pm. Call 606 316 9024 first
Not get scammed	UNGRD has no donation account. Bomberos are not collecting. Cruz Roja has three channels only
Stay safe tonight	Generator outside only, carbon monoxide kills. Smell gas, get out before you call. Aftershocks are still coming

Emergency numbers

These were read off a published source, not from a search result. Several Pereira emergency numbers circulating online do not appear on the pages they are credited to, so we have left those out.

Number	What
123	National emergency line, 24 hours
119	Bomberos de Pereira, 24 hours
132	Cruz Roja Colombiana
144	Defensa Civil Colombiana
316 478 1821	Cruz Roja Pereira, to report a missing person
+57 321 213 9525	Cruz Roja family tracing, WhatsApp
[email protected]	Cruz Roja family tracing, email

Gestión del Riesgo de Pereira (DIGER) has no published direct line. Every official source routes you to 119 or 123, which are staffed around the clock.

Mobile networks are badly degraded. On 11 August, 486 of Risaralda’s 631 base stations were out of service. If a call will not connect, send an SMS instead. A short text message gets through when voice and data do not.

Staying safe right now

These are the things most likely to hurt someone in the days after a big earthquake, as opposed to during it.

If you smell gas: get everyone out first. Do not use a phone, a light switch, a doorbell or any flame inside the building, because a spark can ignite the gas. Call 119 or 123 from outside, or from a neighbor’s. Do not go back in until someone tells you it is safe. Thirteen sectors of Pereira were still without gas on 11 August and lines are damaged, so this is a live risk right now.

Never run a generator indoors. Not in the house, not in a garage, not on a covered patio, not near a window or door. Portable generators produce carbon monoxide, which you cannot smell or see, and it kills people in their sleep. With power still out in parts of the city and hospital generators being prioritized, a lot of people are running portables this week. Put it outside, well away from windows.

For the same reason, use flashlights rather than candles, especially anywhere gas lines may be damaged.

Expect aftershocks. They continue for days and weeks, and they are what brings down a building that survived the first shock. If it starts shaking, drop, take cover and hold on. Do not run outside during the shaking, because facades, glass and roof tiles come down on the street. Once it stops, move away from damaged walls, balconies and windows.

Treat every downed power line as live. Stay at least 10 metres away, never drive over one, and be especially careful where water has pooled. Crews are working on poles that are still energized.

Water. There is no boil notice for Pereira, but that is not the same as a guarantee. If your sector lost pressure, or the water looks or smells off, boil it at a rolling boil for one minute or drink bottled water until Aguas y Aguas confirms normal service.

Food. Throw out anything perishable that has been above refrigeration temperature for more than about four hours. When in doubt, throw it out. A stomach infection right now, with hospitals saturated, is worse than a lost meal.

Do not go back into a damaged building for your belongings. Documents can be replaced and embassies reissue passports. Wait for a structural assessment.

If you depend on powered medical equipment or scheduled treatment, an oxygen concentrator, dialysis, refrigerated insulin, call 123 and say so explicitly. Power is still out in named sectors and this is exactly the situation the emergency system needs to know about.

Curfew and getting around

A curfew ran from 6 p.m. on 10 August to 5 a.m. on 11 August, covering Centro, Comuna Universidad and the Subcentro of Comuna Cuba. It was never citywide.

The Secretaría de Gobierno of Pereira has said the curfew was not extended, and that no vehicle restriction is being applied, so emergency crews and logistics can move freely. That is the last official statement we could confirm, not a guarantee about tonight. These measures get reimposed by decree, often late in the day. Check the Secretaría de Gobierno’s own channel the same day before you plan anything after dark.

Separately from any curfew: looting was reported in Centro, Comuna Universidad and Cuba, which is why those were the three sectors restricted in the first place. Avoid them after dark regardless of what the decree says.

Dosquebradas is a separate municipality with its own decrees. It has been reported as having ordered its own nighttime curfew, which we could not confirm from an official source. If you are in Dosquebradas, none of the Pereira guidance above necessarily applies to you. Check with the Alcaldía de Dosquebradas.

If you live outside the city, on the Cerritos and Vía Condina corridor or in the rural veredas, note that almost everything published about this emergency is about urban Pereira. Power restoration figures, water trucks, collection points and shelters are all city-centric. Outages have run longer outside the city, and no rural distribution point has been published at all.

Classes at all schools, public and private, are suspended until further notice. Unlike the curfew, that measure was issued with no end date, so assume it still stands.

More than a thousand police and soldiers were deployed from Tuesday morning after looting was reported.

Where to take donated goods in Pereira

These are not cafés. Several national outlets printed them as coffee shops. They are the Alcaldía de Pereira’s Centros de Desarrollo Empresarial, named after the neighborhoods they sit in. If you go looking for a coffee shop you will not find one.

Open 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. No phone numbers have been published for any of them.

Point	Address
Consota	Mz 7 y Mz 8, Villa Consota, Cuba
Perla del Otún	diagonal to the church, 2.500 Lotes
El Remanso	main avenue of barrio El Remanso, next to the health centre
Kennedy	main park of Kennedy
Ormazá	Calle 3 bis #5-38, Avenida del Río
San Nicolás	Carrera 14 bis #28-38, old police station
Comuna del Café	Carrera 3 con Calle 59 A, sector A, Parque Industrial

What they accept: clothing in good condition for children and adults, disposable food containers, personal hygiene items, blankets, mattresses and sleeping mats, and dog and cat food.

Two things to know. El Diario del Otún’s version of this list includes a point at Tokio and leaves out El Remanso, while El Tiempo’s does the reverse. Two reputable outlets disagree on one of the seven, so treat those two as less certain than the rest. And the Alcaldía has said the points will keep running “over the coming days” without naming an end date.

Do not take donations to a fire station. Bomberos de Pereira have publicly declined donations and asked that everything go to authorized collection centres instead, so their crews and vehicles stay free for emergency work.

Also confirmed, in Dosquebradas: the Banco de Alimentos de Pereira was damaged, so its collection moved to its Dosquebradas warehouse at Transversal 5 No. 6-30, Calle de las Aromas, La Badea. It takes non-perishable food, water, hygiene items, mattresses and clothing in good condition. Phone first, because reporting on 10 August said the alternate site was still being evaluated: 314 896 2397, 321 646 7811, or 606 315 4138.

Dosquebradas

The Centro Administrativo Municipal (CAM) has a permanent attention tent running all day, handling missing person reports and the census of affected households, and distributing food rations and cooking supplies, 300 blankets, tents and medicines. Starlink satellite internet has been installed there. No street address or phone has been published, but the CAM is the municipal building.

Local places helping

Businesses in Pereira have opened their own doors. This is the part of the response the national press is not covering, because a restaurant cooking for rescuers on day two does not make a wire story. If you know of one that is not here, tell us and we will verify it and add it.

Restaurante Bobadilla and La Última By Bobadilla

Confirmed from their own Instagram account, @bobadillarestaurante. Both venues are receiving food donations and cooking for people affected by the earthquake, delivering the meals out to those who need them.

Where: Av. Juan B. Gutiérrez #15-56, Pinares, Pereira. The address is confirmed independently on the restaurant’s own website. What they are asking for: vegetables, protein, rice, lentils, chickpeas, juice, and especially water, which they single out as the critical item given the heat and the number of people working long shifts. Contact before you go: WhatsApp 310 605 8735 or 311 673 3633, or a direct message on Instagram.

They have not published hours for receiving donations, so message first rather than turning up with a car full of food.

If you cannot reach anyone

The Alcaldía de Pereira switchboard is (+57) 606 324 8000 or 606 324 8179, listed on pereira.gov.co under its earthquake emergency banner as 6 3248000 and 6 3248179. From a mobile you need the 606 area code. It is an administrative line, not an emergency one, but it is the number to call to ask about collection point hours, volunteering, or whether a measure is still in force.

To report a missing person you can also go to the nearest CAI police post in person, as well as calling Cruz Roja Pereira on 316 478 1821.

Give blood

Hospital Universitario San Jorge has said its blood bank is short. Its own appeal calls for donors of all blood types.

Banco de Sangre Aleyda Mejía González de Ángel Hospital Universitario San Jorge, Carrera 4 #24-88, Pereira Monday to Saturday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Switchboard: (+57) 606 316 9024

To donate you need original photo ID, be between 18 and 65, weigh at least 50 kg, be in good health with no flu or fever in the last 15 days, have eaten recently, and have had no alcohol in the last 24 hours. If you have a tattoo, piercing or permanent makeup, at least a year must have passed.

Two caveats worth knowing. The Cruz Roja’s national appeal for O+ and O- donors lists Bogotá, Medellín, Cartagena, Villavicencio, Manizales, Armenia and Cali, and Pereira is not on that list. The San Jorge blood bank is a separate, local channel.

And the hours above are the blood bank’s standard hours, published by the hospital, not hours confirmed for this week specifically. The hospital is running with closed floors and offline imaging. Call 606 316 9024 before you travel. Turning up unannounced at a damaged hospital helps nobody, and burns fuel you may not be able to replace.

Donating money

Cash is usually more useful than goods, because relief organizations can buy what is actually short, locally, at wholesale prices. But this is also where the fraud is. Read the scams section below before you send anything.

From outside Colombia

All of these had a named Colombia earthquake appeal when we checked on 12 August, and all take international cards.

If one of these links does not open, several of these organizations block automated traffic and occasionally block real visitors too. Go to the organization’s own homepage and find the Colombia appeal from there. Never reach a donation page through a link someone sent you, only through the organization’s own domain typed or searched yourself.

• GlobalGiving Colombia Earthquake Relief Fund. Makes rapid, flexible grants to local Colombian organizations. Names Risaralda explicitly. Probably the best single option if you want money reaching Colombian groups rather than a foreign intermediary.
• World Central Kitchen. Meals for families. Its relief page names Pereira as an operating area.
• Catholic Relief Services. Works through Cáritas Colombia and its diocesan and parish network, which has activated its National Emergency Service across dioceses including Pereira. We link the CRS homepage rather than the appeal page because their site sits behind a bot check we could not get past to confirm the direct link; find the Colombia earthquake appeal from there.
• Save the Children. Child protection, safe spaces, mental health support.
• CARE. Clean water, food vouchers, health services, hygiene items.
• World Food Programme. Logistics and warehousing, via an earthquake-specific campaign rather than its general fund.
• Americares. Medicines and medical supplies. Has had a Bogotá office since 2018.

Two notes. UNICEF UK’s page is a combined “Colombia and Worldwide” appeal, so money given there is not ring-fenced to Colombia. And Médecins Sans Frontières has no Colombia earthquake appeal as of 12 August, whatever you may have seen shared.

From inside Colombia

• Cruz Roja Colombiana states it has enabled exactly three channels: a Davivienda cuenta corriente under NIT 899.999.025-3, Daviplata, and the “Dona ya” button on its own site. Anything else claiming to be the Red Cross is not. Read the account number off cruzrojacolombiana.org yourself. We deliberately are not printing it here, because the number came back differently across two separate automated reads of their content, and a single wrong digit sends your money to a stranger.
• Sociedad de Mejoras de Pereira, Bancolombia savings account 27000000533. This is a Pereira-specific civic association account, reported by El Diario del Otún and Lea Pues on 11 August. Confirm it on an official Alcaldía channel before transferring.
• Fundación Solidaridad por Colombia, Bancolombia 167-000109-63, Bre-B key @juntosxcolombia. National rather than Risaralda-specific.
• Fundación Éxito is running a checkout micro-donation at Éxito, Carulla, Surtimax and Super Inter tills from 10 August to 15 September, funding food packages that include Pereira. Easiest option if you are already standing in a supermarket.

Verify every account number on the organization’s own website immediately before you transfer. Not from a screenshot, not from a forwarded message, and not from this page.

To be explicit about why we print some account numbers and not the Cruz Roja one: the numbers above each matched across two independent sources we read directly. The Cruz Roja number came back differently across two reads, so we will not repeat a digit string we cannot pin down. That difference in treatment is deliberate, and it is also the standard you should hold us to. A bank transfer is irreversible. Read the digits off the organization’s own page, with your own eyes, immediately before you send.

Scams, and how to spot them

Fraud around this earthquake is already confirmed and active.

• The Policía Cibernética has warned of a surge in fake “victim list” and “rescue video” links spreading by WhatsApp and SMS that install malware or harvest banking credentials, along with fake government aid messages asking for transfers.
• Cruz Roja has warned people not to hand cash or goods to anyone claiming to be a Red Cross collection point, because it has not set any up that way.
• Fake social media profiles impersonating official bodies and advertising invented collection centres have been identified.

Three facts that let you catch a fake instantly:

1. UNGRD publishes no donation account at all. Any bank account presented as “the UNGRD earthquake account” is fraudulent on its face.
2. Bomberos de Pereira are not collecting donations and have said so publicly.
3. Cruz Roja has three channels and no others.

One specific warning. A site called terremotocolombia.com circulates as though it were an official volunteer registry. It is not. It redirects to terremotovenezuela.com, a crowdsourced damage map from the June 2026 Venezuela earthquake, and it collects your name and contact details. Do not use it.

A few more that are predictable in the days after a disaster:

• Nequi, Daviplata and Bre-B transfers are instant and irreversible. No legitimate collector will pressure you to send within minutes. Pressure to hurry is the tell.
• No official body charges a fee to register you as a volunteer, as an aid recipient, or for a rent subsidy. If someone asks for a payment to process your registration, it is a scam.
• Change an Avianca booking only through avianca.com or the app, never through a link that arrives by SMS or WhatsApp.
• Fake damage inspectors. Looting crews pose as structural assessors to get inside houses. No legitimate assessor demands entry on the spot or charges a fee at your door. Ask for Alcaldía or Gestión del Riesgo credentials, and verify by phone before you let anyone in.

And the general rule: never send money, personal details or banking data in response to an inbound WhatsApp or SMS, no matter how official it looks.

Official channels, so “verify it yourself” means something

We tell you several times on this page to confirm something on an official channel. These are the ones to use:

• Alcaldía de Pereira, pereira.gov.co, switchboard 606 324 8000
• Gestión del Riesgo de Pereira (DIGER), via 119 or 123
• Cruz Roja Colombiana, cruzrojacolombiana.org
• UNGRD, portal.gestiondelriesgo.gov.co, toll free 01-8000-113200
• Servicio Geológico Colombiano, sgc.gov.co, for earthquake and aftershock information

If a claim is not on one of these, or on the organization’s own website, treat it as unconfirmed no matter who forwarded it to you.

What is working in Pereira

Power

Roughly 75 percent restored as of the night of 10 August. Centro, Villa Verde, Samaria and Pinares were deliberately kept off for safety while crews dealt with downed poles and still-live lines. No full restoration date has been published. EEP: 606 3151515, or 115 from a landline.

That 75 percent figure is from 10 August and it overstates things for some neighborhoods. A Pereira resident confirmed to us on 12 August that they were still without power more than 48 hours in, running a generator to keep a refrigerator and internet going. If you are still dark, you are not an outlier and you should plan for it to continue. Read the generator safety note above before you run one.

Gas

13 sectors of Pereira were still without gas as of 11 August. Do not tamper with gas or electrical installations. If you smell gas, get out of the building first and call 119 or 123 from outside, not from inside. See the safety section above.

Note that a “sectors with gas restored” list circulating online is from May 2023 and has nothing to do with this earthquake. Check the date on anything you are sent.

Water

Aguas y Aguas de Pereira reported only minor network problems, already corrected. Twelve aqueducts were damaged across Risaralda. In high sectors such as Villasantana, water is out because the pumping stations lost power, so water returns when electricity does. Officials are asking people to limit consumption. No boil-water advisory has been issued for Pereira, which is not the same as a guarantee that the water is safe.

Water trucks were promised by the national government, but no distribution points, schedule or hotline have been published. A widely shared article listing carrotanque schedules for Comuna del Café is from September 2023 and concerns a landslide. Ignore it.

Internet and mobile

Intermittent. Use SMS. Free relief packages have been applied automatically, with no application needed:

• Claro, prepaid: 2 GB plus unlimited minutes and SMS for 7 days.
• Tigo, prepaid: 2 GB for 3 days, which may already have lapsed.
• WOM, prepaid: 2 GB plus unlimited minutes for 12 to 17 August. Postpaid: unlimited data and voice for 15 days, through 24 August. Pereira, Dosquebradas and Santa Rosa de Cabal are named. La Virginia is not.
• Starlink: free service in the affected zone through 12 September, plus free equipment replacement.

Movistar published nothing about its Risaralda network.

Utility bills

Three months of relief on water, sewerage, gas, power and waste bills has been decreed for affected people and businesses in Risaralda.

Fuel

Severe shortage. Stations were not selling in most of the city, with hours-long queues, and some stations were physically damaged. Fuel coming into the region is being prioritized to keep private hospital generators running. Megabús could not run for lack of fuel.

Rationing is real, and so are the queues. A Pereira resident who went out for fuel on 12 August told us directly: queues at two separate stations totalling more than three hours, and one station capping sales at 50,000 pesos. Reports also put a 20,000 peso cap on motorcycles, and name Cerritos and parts of Avenida 30 de Agosto as places selling, though we could not confirm those specific locations from a published source.

Do the arithmetic before you go. The same resident pointed out that the 50,000 peso ration came to roughly what the round trip across the city cost him in fuel. If you are driving any real distance to queue for a capped sale, you may burn most of what you are about to buy. That changes the decision:

• Go to the nearest station that is selling, not the one you heard is best. A rumoured better station across town is probably a net loss.
• Take a jerry can so the trip yields more than a partial tank.
• Do not make the trip at all unless you actually need the fuel now, for a generator, a medical trip, or leaving the city. Every car in the queue is a car in the queue.

Banks and cash

Cards are working normally, in shops and online. Bank offices are another matter: Banco de Bogotá, BBVA, AV Villas, Porvenir and Banco Popular all closed or suspended offices across Risaralda, and Banco de Occidente closed some preventively. Bancolombia’s Pereira offices cannot process cheques.

Davivienda has told customers directly that its Pereira offices are temporarily closed as a preventive measure, and that these channels are active instead: the app and davivienda.com 24 hours a day, free withdrawals at Davivienda ATMs, debit and credit cards working normally for purchases and transactions, and other banks’ ATMs usable with the commission reimbursed to your account by Davivienda.

• ATMs are the recommended route, and withdrawals at another bank’s ATM are free, with fees being refunded.
• Corresponsales bancarios inside Éxito and D1 were activated as cash points.
• Apps, websites and phone banking are active.

A card terminal needs both electricity and a data connection, and Pereira reliably has neither. Carry some cash if you can get it.

With looting reported and parts of the city dark, withdraw in daylight, prefer a machine inside a supermarket over a standalone one on the street, and avoid Centro machines after dark.

Shops

No supermarket chain published a Pereira branch status, which is a real gap rather than an oversight. What is confirmed is that merchants reopened on 11 August despite broken glass, with pharmacies, bakeries, cafés and restaurants serving residents, and that the President asked local commerce to reopen immediately to fix supply. Water and some food were reported running short.

One branch we can name with confidence: Éxito Parque Arboleda reopened with pedestrian entry only, until 8:00 p.m., while the rest of the shopping centre stayed restricted pending structural checks.

A separate graphic listing Grupo Éxito banners has also been circulating. We could not trace it to an official Grupo Éxito account, but every branch on it is real and it is consistent with the Parque Arboleda reopening above, so we pass it on as leads to phone rather than as confirmed status. It lists as open, in Pereira: Éxito Parque Arboleda, Carulla Castilla, Carulla Villa Olímpica, Carulla Villa Verde, Super Inter la Tienda, Super Inter Pereira. And in Armenia: Carulla Armenia Plaza, Carulla Feria de los Plátanos.

Separately, Fundación Éxito is running the checkout donation described in the money section, so a trip to one of these can do two things at once.

Dosquebradas, which branches were open

This is a snapshot from the morning of 12 August, from a “Reporte de establecimientos comerciales” graphic circulated by the Alcaldía de Dosquebradas. We reproduce it because it is the only branch-level information anyone has published, and because nothing else on this page tells a Dosquebradas resident where to buy food.

Two honest caveats. The graphic appears to have been posted to social media as a story rather than a permanent post, so we could not re-open the original to re-check it, and it is not on dosquebradas.gov.co. And a store list ages faster than anything else here. Treat this as a list of places worth phoning, not a promise that a door is open.

Reported open:

• Ara: Barrio San Félix, Bosques de La Acuarela, La Mariana, La Capilla
• D1: La Mariana, La Romelia, Bosques de La Acuarela
• Oxxo Bosques de La Acuarela, reported undamaged and open until 10:00 p.m.
• Súper Inter Santa Isabel, reported operating with no structural damage, only three roof tiles affected

Reported closed: Mercamás, Makro, and Súper Inter branches other than Santa Isabel.

Note that Súper Inter appears on both lists, which is the point: status is per branch, not per chain. Do not assume a supermarket is open because another store with the same sign is.

Expofuturo has been designated as the venue receiving national relief supplies.

Pharmacies

No chain published a status and no on-call roster was issued for the emergency. Some pharmacies reopened on 11 August. If you depend on a prescription, phone ahead. Hospital San Jorge has reported shortages of oxygen tanks for ambulatory patients.

Hospitals

Risaralda is under hospital red alert.

• Hospital Universitario San Jorge is open, with reinforced emergency services, at Cra. 4 #24-88. It is running degraded: Medicina Interna closed, 60 beds off on the fifth floor, 20 more on the fourth, seven ICU cubicles closed, and imaging diagnostics offline.
• Clínica Los Nevados is evacuated. Do not go. Its 216 patients were moved to Coliseo Menor and then to Clínica Pinares Médica.
• Comfamiliar Risaralda is partially evacuated with structural damage. 130 emergency patients were relocated and 210 inpatients evacuated. No all-clear has been published.
• Hospital Santa Mónica, Dosquebradas was reported without power on 11 August and was assigned a 250 hp generator.
• A 28-bed field hospital was announced and flown in. Its location in Pereira has never been published, so do not try to route a patient there.

If you are injured, call 123 first and let the dispatcher route you, because three major facilities are damaged or evacuated and nobody is publishing live bed availability. If you cannot get through and the injury is serious, go to Hospital San Jorge, which is open with reinforced emergency services. Do not go to Los Nevados, which is evacuated, or to Comfamiliar, which has not published an all-clear.

Shelters

Six official shelters were operating in Pereira, holding 480 people on the night of 11 to 12 August, with mattresses, food, psychosocial support and health care: Coliseo Mayor, Parque El Vergel, Parque El Oso, Parque Olaya Herrera, Plaza de Ferias, and Estadio Mora Mora. No street addresses have been published for any of them, though all are well known public venues.

Rental subsidies have been announced for people whose homes are awaiting structural assessment. To qualify you must register with Bomberos. That is a registration process, not a donation drop-off, so it is not the same thing as the rule elsewhere on this page about not taking goods to fire stations. Where and how you register has not been published, so call the Alcaldía switchboard to ask.

If you go to a shelter, take identification, any medication you need, drinking water, and bedding if you can carry it. Whether pets are accepted at each shelter has not been published, so call ahead if you have an animal.

Note that Coliseo Menor is not a general shelter. It was a medical staging point. Do not confuse it with Coliseo Mayor.

No shelter has been named in Dosquebradas, La Virginia or Santa Rosa de Cabal.

Getting in and out

Matecaña International Airport (PEI) is closed to commercial flights, with no reopening date. The terminal roof collapsed and three people died there. Only state, medical, search and rescue, and humanitarian aircraft are being handled.

Open alternatives: Cali (CLO), fully normal and the most reliable. Armenia (AXM), the nearest open commercial airport to Pereira. Manizales (MZL), open but operating without a control tower. Quibdó, open.

Avianca is offering free date and route changes and refunds for tickets to or from Pereira, Armenia, Cali and Quibdó through 16 August, and has added around 2,500 seats into Cali, Armenia and Quibdó. No other airline’s position could be verified.

On the ground:

• Megabús and Megacable are suspended until further notice.
• Yellow buses and taxis are running, including routes to La Florida, Arabia and La Virginia, some rerouted around landslides.
• The Terminal de Transportes is operating intermittently because of road blockages. Which destinations are actually departing is not published.
• Officials are asking people to avoid private vehicles, to keep lanes clear for emergency traffic.

Roads, as of 11 August:

• Toward Manizales: Pereira to Chinchiná is CLOSED, landslide at km 22 to 24.
• Toward Armenia: landslides at several points, single-lane passage, passable with delays.
• La Línea, Calarcá to Cajamarca: open, single lane at km 17, 27 and 31.
• Toward Chocó: Santa Cecilia to Pueblo Rico is totally blocked.
• Cali to Loboguerrero is totally restricted.
• No status was published for the direct Pereira to Cartago to Cali road. Check before setting out.

If you are trying to leave, read this carefully rather than just picking one:

• Armenia (AXM) is the shortest realistic option. The road was single lane and passable with delays as of 11 August. Confirm before departing.
• Cali (CLO) has the most reliable connections, but no status has been published for the direct Pereira to Cartago to Cali road. Do not set out on that route until police or Invías confirm it.
• Avoid the Manizales and Chocó directions entirely.

Do not attempt either drive without a full tank. Fuel along the route is not reliable, and running dry on a damaged single-lane corridor blocks it for everyone behind you, including ambulances.

Every road status above is as of 11 August. Landslide conditions change with rain and with each aftershock. Treat single-lane sections as liable to close without notice, and confirm the same day.

Pets and animals

• Urgencias veterinarias de Ukumarí at the Bioparque is the designated emergency point for companion animals. No address, hours or phone has been published anywhere, which is a real problem with an otherwise useful service.
• Hospital Público Veterinario de Maraya is temporarily closed. Do not take an animal there.
• The seven Alcaldía collection points accept dog and cat food, and are the only verified pet-supply drop-off in the metro area.
• Fixit is running free 24-hour remote veterinary guidance: mobile 333 602 5800, landline 601 438 7525.
• Fundación Siempre a Tu Lado in Dosquebradas lost power, cannot get feed, and must vacate its lot. The need is real and confirmed by two outlets, but neither published a phone number or account, so there is currently no safe way to route a donation to them.

Be careful here. Fake accounts and links soliciting for animal appeals are already circulating. Verify directly with the foundation.

Volunteering

Pereira’s Director of Gestión del Riesgo, Dayana Gómez, has asked specifically for volunteers with rescue experience, engineers and architects, and asked that they work away from the critical zone so they support the wider community rather than crowd the collapse sites. This is not an open call for untrained hands.

Health professionals are being recruited by the Asociación Colombiana de Sociedades Científicas and ASSOSALUD: doctors, specialists, surgical technicians, nurses, auxiliaries and paramedics, with immediate availability to travel. El Espectador published the signup form on 11 August. Be aware the form is hosted on a generic vercel.app subdomain, which has the shape of a phishing link even though a national newspaper published it. Go via the El Espectador article rather than a forwarded link.

Whatever you do, do not enter a damaged or cordoned building to search, help or retrieve anything. Aftershocks are ongoing, and untrained people are routinely killed by secondary collapse while trying to help.

If you are a foreign resident and not a trained responder, the honest advice is: take goods to an Alcaldía collection point, give money only through an institutional channel, and do not self-deploy. Also register with your embassy’s alert system if you have not, so they can reach you and you can reach them. Colombia has declined offers of foreign rescue teams, saying it is fielding 23 of its own, and national guidance says volunteers should go through established humanitarian organizations rather than travelling to affected zones on their own initiative.

Checking your house for damage

If there is a smell of gas, a water leak, damaged cables, or the structure looks at risk, get out and call for help. If you are unsure, do not go back in.

Not every crack is dangerous, but some are. Roughly, from lowest to highest concern:

• Hairline cracks in plaster, paint or stucco. Usually cosmetic, low risk.
• Vertical cracks, straight top to bottom. Often shrinkage or small movement. Low to moderate. Watch whether they grow.
• Horizontal cracks parallel to the floor. Can indicate pressure or deformation. Moderate to high, needs attention.
• Diagonal cracks at around 45 degrees. Can indicate structural movement or settlement. High risk, needs evaluation.
• Stair-step cracks following brick or block joints. Associated with settlement. High risk, needs evaluation.
• Cracks radiating from door and window corners. Stress concentration or missing reinforcement. Moderate, monitor.
• Separation between wall and column, or between wall and slab or beam. Moderate to high.
• Cracks in concrete beams or columns themselves. High risk. Needs structural evaluation.
• Cracks with rust stains, loose concrete or exposed steel. Very high risk. Immediate attention.

Signs that need attention right away: cracks that cross a whole wall or form an X, cracks that are visibly growing, doors or windows that suddenly will not open or close, uneven or sinking floors, columns or walls that are leaning, and spalled concrete or exposed steel.

Check walls inside and out, roofs, slabs and beams, columns and joints, stairs and railings, retaining walls, and gas, water, electrical and drainage installations. Photograph everything, with something for scale like a coin, and mark the date, so you can tell later whether a crack is growing. If you live in a building, check the shared areas too: stairwells, corridors, parking.

If there is only fine cracking in finishes, the space is generally habitable. Visible cracks in walls or separation between elements mean monitor it and consult a professional. Large cracks, X-shaped cracks, damaged columns or slabs, or elements coming away mean do not live there and get an urgent structural assessment.

One limit worth being blunt about. This list can tell you when to get out. It cannot tell you a building is safe. Only a structural engineer can do that. If there is any crack in a beam or a column, any of the red flags above, or any doubt at all, sleep somewhere else tonight. Aftershocks are what finish off a structure that survived the first shock.

What we could not verify

We would rather tell you the holes than let you assume the page is complete.

• No supermarket or pharmacy branch status was published by any chain for Pereira. If you need something specific, phone ahead.
• No opening hours or phone numbers exist for most collection points, and none at all for Ukumarí.
• The fuel situation today. The one specific claim about where fuel is available is unconfirmed.
• Whether water is back in the high sectors, and whether Centro, Villa Verde, Samaria and Pinares have power again.
• Live hospital capacity. Nobody publishes it.
• Which intermunicipal bus routes are actually departing.
• We have no information at all for La Virginia and Santa Rosa de Cabal. No collection point, kitchen, shelter or business action appears in any source we checked.
• Grassroots relief is almost certainly much larger than what is published here. National outlets are treating Pereira as a destination for aid rather than a place with its own directory, and the local paper is filing rescue coverage rather than relief logistics. If you know of a restaurant cooking for rescuers, a neighborhood collection point, or a business taking donations, tell us and we will verify it and add it.

Casualty figures are still moving and official sources disagree with each other. We are not publishing a single number here, because any figure we printed would be wrong within hours.

Where this came from

Every claim above was checked against a source we opened and read on 11 or 12 August, not against a search summary or a forwarded message. The main ones:

• Collection points, blood banks and official donation channels: El Tiempo’s national aid guide, updated 12 August, cross-checked against El Diario del Otún which disagrees on one of the seven points
• Rescue balance, curfew and municipal measures: Alcaldía de Pereira and Semana
• Hospital status: Gobernación de Risaralda and Hospital Universitario San Jorge
• Power, gas and road status: El Diario del Otún and El Tiempo
• Airport and air travel: Aerocivil reporting via El Tiempo and UK FCDO travel advice
• Red Cross channels: cruzrojacolombiana.org
• Restaurante Bobadilla: the restaurant’s own Instagram account
• Earthquake parameters: Servicio Geológico Colombiano and the USGS, which disagree on depth

Some of this came from residents in Pereira reporting directly to us, and where that is the case the page says so. If you find something here that is wrong or out of date, tell us and we will fix it.