Mw 7.4 San Jose Del Palmar Earthquake — Cascading Implications for Colombia's Chocó Department

Our latest Intelligence Directive, from a Newrali Special Operation, published as issued.

This one is a revision: the 12 August edition went out inside the acute window, and three days of reporting have since moved several judgements — the US aid figure that this analysis called an opening position has been confirmed as one, the search-and-rescue phase has closed, and a missing-persons count that ran as high as ~4,000 in crowd-sourced tracking has reconciled down toward ~500. The revisions are marked in place rather than quietly folded in, which is the point: an assessment you can audit is worth more than one that always sounds like it was right the first time.

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Mw 7.4 San Jose Del Palmar Earthquake — Cascading Humanitarian, Governance, and Strategic Stability Implications for Colombia’s Chocó Department and Andean-Pacific Corridor

Field	Value
Classification	UNCLASSIFIED
Domain	Environmental Security & Geopolitical Stability
Audience	Strategic Decision Makers
Reporting Date	13 August 2026
Threat Level	🟠 HIGH
Format	Structured Analytic Format (ICD 203 / Admiralty)

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🔑 The Ask

A massive earthquake hit western Colombia on 10 August, three days into a brand-new president’s term. As of this update, 265 people are confirmed dead, 3,500+ are injured, and roughly 500 remain officially missing, though that missing number has swung wildly (crowd-sourced counts ran as high as ~4,000 in the first two days) as records get sorted out. Search-and-rescue is now officially over; the response is shifting into recovery and rebuilding.

The three things that matter most from here:

1. Money is flowing, the job now is tracking delivery, not pledges. Countries and multilateral institutions have pledged roughly $1.3 billion combined, dwarfing the US’s initial $15.5 million. The open question isn’t “will enough money show up”, it’s whether pledged money actually gets delivered and spent where it’s needed.
2. Chocó’s security vacuum is the main medium-term risk. The hardest-hit area is also an established drug-trafficking corridor with thin state presence. While security forces stay tied up on rescue and curfew duty elsewhere, armed groups already active there have room to move in. This is the single most important thing to keep watching over the coming months.
3. The new government is being tested on coordination, not just capacity. A leadership change at the national disaster agency mid-crisis, and public accusations that aid was being accepted or declined along political lines, both point to a government still finding its footing. Neither is disqualifying on its own, but both are worth tracking closely.

The actual to-do list:

• Track how the ~$1.3B in pledges converts into delivered, spent assistance, that conversion rate is the real test
• Watch Chocó specifically for early signs of armed groups moving into the post-quake vacuum
• Get the true, reconciled missing-persons number once the emergency lists are fully cleaned up
• Watch whether the new disaster-agency director stabilizes or further disrupts coordination
• Monitor whether the “ideological aid” controversy fades or grows into a bigger political story
• Keep an eye on the 12-month national disaster decree (covering 12 departments) for any legislative pushback
• Watch for aftershocks large enough to further damage buildings already weakened

Everything below is the full, sourced version of this assessment.

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

1. A 7.4-magnitude strike-slip earthquake struck San Jose Del Palmar, Chocó department, at 07:34 local time on 10 August 2026. As of this revision (13 August), the confirmed toll stands at 265 dead and more than 3,500 injured; Colombia’s Geological Service describes it as the strongest earthquake to hit the country in at least a decade and the largest since 1979, and it remains, provisionally, Colombia’s most seismically destructive event of the twenty-first century by casualty count.
2. President de la Espriella had been in office for three days when the earthquake struck, rendering the Chocó disaster the inaugural governance crisis of his administration before any coherent policy or emergency-management apparatus had been established. The government has since formalised a 12-month national disaster decree (extendable) covering 12 departments.
3. The earthquake’s epicentre sits within the Nazca–South America plate convergence zone (part of the broader Malpelo microplate boundary complex), a corridor with a documented historical record of catastrophic seismic events across the Andean-Pacific corridor. USGS focal-mechanism analysis attributes the rupture to strike-slip faulting roughly 107–110 km deep, within the subducting Nazca slab.
4. The most comparable domestic precedent remains the January 1999 Armenia earthquake (Mw 6.1), which killed approximately 1,185 people across the adjacent Eje Cafetero corridor, a disaster operating at a fraction of the current event’s confirmed scale.
5. We assess it is highly likely that organised criminal actors operating in Chocó will exploit degraded state presence, disrupted supply chains, and overwhelmed security forces to consolidate territorial and economic gains in affected zones during the relief and early-recovery window. The administration’s stated intent to restart military-led counter-narcotics operations in the corridor is a relevant but as-yet-untested variable.
6. We judge it is likely that the compounding pressures of mass casualties, an unresolved missing-persons caseload, and an unproven executive will fracture elite political cohesion within the de la Espriella administration within the next 60–90 days. A mid-crisis change in leadership at the national disaster management agency (UNGRD), accompanied by pointed public criticism of the outgoing leadership, is an early, modest data point consistent with, though not confirmation of this trajectory.
7. International financial commitments have moved well beyond initial figures: as of 13 August, multilateral institutions alone have presented cooperation proposals totalling an estimated USD 1.3 billion, separate from formal bilateral pledges of aid or rescue personnel from more than a dozen individual countries against the USD 15.5 million initial US commitment. This confirms this analysis’s earlier judgment (Pillar 4) that the US figure represented an opening position rather than a ceiling; the operative uncertainty has now shifted from pledge volume to disbursement speed and absorption capacity.
8. Colombian officials declared the acute search-and-rescue phase concluded as of 13 August, with no further persons believed trapped in rubble. The response is transitioning into recovery, resettlement, and reconstruction planning, which carries a different and more prolonged risk profile than the acute phase this analysis initially addressed.

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OPERATING ENVIRONMENT

Political

President Abelardo de la Espriella assumed office on 7 August 2026, three days before the 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck the Chocó department, making the disaster the inaugural governance crisis of his administration. De la Espriella declared a national state of emergency on 10 August and has since formalised a 12-month national disaster decree (with the possibility of extension) covering Antioquia, Caldas, Cauca, Chocó, Quindío, Cundinamarca, Risaralda, Huila, Valle del Cauca, Tolima, Putumayo, and Norte de Santander, with the Finance Ministry directed to fund the response through the National Disaster Risk Management Fund. The government separately declared three days of national mourning, with the national flag at half-staff on public buildings, embassies, and consulates. In a mid-crisis leadership change, the president installed David Santiago Tamayo Roldán as permanent director of the national disaster agency (UNGRD) via Decree 1170 (11 August), replacing acting director Javier Pava, alongside pointed public criticism of the agency’s prior management. Colombia’s Foreign Ministry has separately had to publicly deny accusations that international aid offers were being accepted or declined on ideological grounds, after the government formalised search-and-rescue requests to only four countries (the United States, El Salvador, Ecuador, and Israel) on stated technical/certification grounds. Authorities in Cali, Pereira, Manizales, and Armenia imposed curfews within hours of the quake, citing active looting threats. The US State Department committed an initial USD 15.5 million in emergency humanitarian aid; Colombian officials now report an additional estimated USD 1.3 billion in multilateral cooperation proposals, on top of bilateral pledges from more than a dozen governments. The emergency declaration concentrates executive authority in de la Espriella’s government at a moment when his administration still lacks a consolidated political coalition or a crisis-tested policy apparatus.

Military

Colombia’s armed forces are deployed alongside national police across the affected departments in a combined search-and-rescue and public-order posture; roughly 1,000 additional security personnel were dispatched to Cali alone in response to looting activity, on top of standing troop deployments. Military assets operated in a degraded infrastructure environment: national damage assessments now record 140 fully collapsed buildings, 9,215 destroyed homes, and 45,547 damaged homes, including hospital infrastructure that served as forward medical facilities. The Colombian Geological Service has recorded more than 130 aftershocks since the initial event, with the largest registering magnitude 5.0, creating ongoing hazard conditions for personnel working in and around structurally compromised sites. The government has formalised international search-and-rescue support from only the United States, El Salvador, Ecuador, and Israel, citing a requirement for internationally certified teams; other governments’ rescue offers, including Mexico’s, remained undeployed as of 12 August pending formal requests. The Chocó department, the epicentre zone, remains an active operational area for armed non-state groups, whose territorial presence is unaffected by the military’s disaster-response reorientation. The administration’s stated intent to restart a Plan Colombia-style counter-narcotics military programme, under a newly formalised “Shield of the Americas” security alliance carrying a USD 1 billion US security-assistance package, adds a relevant but untested variable to the security picture in the corridor.

Economic

The earthquake struck the coffee-producing department of Risaralda and the industrial and commercial centre of Cali, Colombia’s third most populous city, disrupting two of the country’s highest-value economic zones simultaneously. National damage assessments now put the toll at 403 affected municipalities across 14 departments, with 188 health facilities, 1,667 educational facilities, 530 community centres, and 129 roads damaged. Cali’s Petronio Álvarez festival, a major driver of regional tourism revenue, was suspended by city authorities in the immediate aftermath. The Chocó department, whose economy is structurally dependent on mining and whose geography constitutes a primary cocaine-trafficking corridor to Pacific export routes, is experiencing compounded disruption to both licit and illicit economic flows through that corridor. International financing has scaled rapidly: against the initial USD 15.5 million US commitment, Colombian Vice President José Manuel Restrepo reported on 12–13 August that multilateral institutions alone had presented cooperation proposals totalling USD 1.3 billion, separate from bilateral pledges from more than a dozen countries. The gap between pledged and disbursed funding is now the primary economic uncertainty, having superseded the earlier question of whether pledge volume would be adequate at all.

Sociocultural / Environmental

The 7.4-magnitude strike-slip rupture occurred at a depth of approximately 107–110 km beneath San José del Palmar, Chocó, producing severe (MMI VII–VIII) intensity shaking across the epicentral zone and transmitting felt motion as far as Bogotá, and into Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela. As of 13 August, official figures stand at 265 confirmed dead and more than 3,500 injured. The missing-persons figure has been the least stable data point in this event and requires careful handling: official local-authority tallies put the missing at roughly 500 as of 13 August, down sharply from earlier reporting, while crowd-sourced civilian tracking databases had separately suggested a figure as high as ~3,900–4,000 in the first 48 hours. Because the confirmed death toll rose only modestly over the same window (from roughly 254 to 265), this decline more likely reflects list reconciliation, deduplication, and restored communications than a proportional increase in confirmed fatalities, though a residual risk of upward revision remains, particularly from harder-to-reach rural Chocó. The Chocó department is one of Colombia’s most ethnically distinct regions, with majority Afro-Colombian and Indigenous populations concentrated in communities with historically limited access to state services and infrastructure, compounding humanitarian access challenges. The earthquake follows a back-to-back seismic sequence in the broader Andean corridor: twin earthquakes struck Venezuela on 24 June 2026, killing more than 6,000 people and straining regional emergency response capacity across neighbouring states. The plate boundary that produced this strike-slip event intersects directly with western Colombia’s most densely populated highland urban corridor, placing Cali, Pereira, Manizales, and Quibdó within the same structural risk zone.

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PILLAR ANALYSIS

Pillar 1: Threat Agents & Sources

Fact

Open-source reporting confirms that the 10 August 2026 Mw 7.4 strike-slip earthquake struck San Jose Del Palmar in Colombia’s Chocó department at 07:34 local time, within the Nazca–South America convergence zone (part of the broader Malpelo microplate boundary complex). USGS focal-mechanism analysis attributes the rupture to strike-slip faulting roughly 107–110 km deep, a structural geometry with a documented history of generating damaging seismic sequences across the Andean-Pacific corridor.

Northwestern University seismologist Suzan van der Lee’s public technical assessment characterised the 2026 event’s structural parameters as consistent with the tectonic geometry known to produce sustained, damaging aftershock sequences in the region.

Open-source reporting confirms that looting-driven security threats emerged within hours of the mainshock, compelling authorities in Cali, Pereira, Manizales, and Armenia to impose curfews, establishing organised criminal opportunism as a co-occurring secondary threat alongside the physical disaster. (Corrected: the initial edition of this report omitted Pereira, which multiple independent sources confirm was among the first cities to impose a curfew.)

Comment

The 1999 Armenia earthquake, at Mw 6.1, less than half the energy release of the 2026 event, was sufficient to generate a security vacuum subsequently exploited by paramilitaries and narco-trafficking organisations consolidating control along Pacific smuggling corridors; the 2026 event’s greater magnitude and broader footprint across Chocó, Risaralda, and Valle del Cauca creates an analogous but structurally larger and more geographically dispersed threat surface.

The strike-slip fault mechanism identified in the 2026 event is characteristic of seismic sequences that produce spatially diffuse aftershocks over extended periods; more than 130 aftershocks had been recorded as of 13 August, the largest at magnitude 5.0, extending the physical threat horizon beyond the mainshock window and compounding risk to infrastructure already compromised across the affected departments.

The administration’s stated intent to restart a Plan Colombia-style counter-narcotics military programme and launch new offensives against armed groups, under the newly formalised USD 1 billion “Shield of the Americas” security-assistance framework, is a directionally ambiguous variable for this threat picture: increased military resourcing could suppress opportunistic criminal consolidation in the disaster zone, or could stretch already-committed security forces thinner across competing rescue, curfew, and offensive-operations demands. Available reporting does not yet indicate which effect predominates.

Assessment

We assess it is highly likely that organised criminal actors operating along Pacific trafficking corridors documented as active in Chocó and Valle del Cauca will exploit the institutional vacuum created by collapsed state presence in affected municipalities. [HIGH CONFIDENCE]

We assess it is likely that aftershock sequences of sufficient magnitude to further degrade standing structures will continue in the weeks following the 10 August mainshock, compounding both casualty risk and the operational environment for recovery and reconstruction teams working in structurally compromised sites. [MODERATE CONFIDENCE]

Pillar 2: Exposed Populations & Systems

Fact

As of 13 August 2026, official reporting confirms 265 people killed and more than 3,500 injured. National damage assessments now record 140 fully collapsed buildings, 9,215 destroyed homes, and 45,547 damaged homes across 403 municipalities in 14 departments, up sharply from the initial 10 August figures as assessment teams reached previously inaccessible areas, particularly in rural Chocó.

Field reporting indicates that hospitals across the affected zone sustained structural damage in the immediate aftermath of the mainshock, directly undermining medical surge capacity; national figures now record 188 health facilities affected.

Open-source reporting confirms that the primary exposure zone spans Chocó department and the adjoining Eje Cafetero corridor departments of Risaralda and Valle del Cauca, a region characterised by elevated poverty rates, a high proportion of informal construction, and chronically limited state-service presence, all of which structurally amplify seismic vulnerability.

Comment

The missing-persons figure for this event has been the least reliable data point and warrants explicit methodological caution. Official local-authority tallies stood at roughly 195 on 11 August; crowd-sourced civilian tracking databases separately suggested figures approaching 4,000 across 11–12 August (the range this report’s initial edition drew from); and official tallies stood at approximately 500 by 13 August. Because the confirmed death toll rose only modestly over this window (from roughly 254 to 265), the sharp decline in the missing count more plausibly reflects list deduplication and restored communications than a proportional conversion of “missing” into “confirmed dead.” Analysts should treat any single missing-persons figure from this event with caution until UNGRD publishes a formally reconciled count.

The 1999 Armenia earthquake at Mw 6.1 killed approximately 1,185 people and triggered prolonged internal displacement across Quindío department; the 2026 event’s greater magnitude, higher confirmed casualty count, and multi-department exposure footprint indicate a displacement and humanitarian caseload of a categorically different scale, with direct implications for urban reception capacity in Cali and Medellín.

Assessment

We now assess it is likely, rather than the near-certainty judged in the initial reporting period, that the confirmed death toll will continue to rise moderately as remote areas of rural Chocó are fully assessed. However, the pattern of missing-persons reconciliation observed between 11–13 August makes it unlikely that final mortality will approach the unreconciled ~4,000 figure reported in early crowd-sourced tracking. [MODERATE CONFIDENCE]

We assess it is likely that mass displacement from Chocó, Risaralda, and Valle del Cauca will generate compounding humanitarian pressure on urban reception infrastructure in Cali and Medellín, stressing social services and security-management capacity in centres already subject to curfew enforcement. [MODERATE CONFIDENCE]

Pillar 3: Response & Mitigation Capacity

Fact

Open-source reporting confirms that President Abelardo de la Espriella, inaugurated three days before the earthquake, declared a national state of emergency on 10 August 2026 and subsequently formalised a 12-month national disaster decree covering 12 departments, funded through the National Disaster Risk Management Fund.

Colombia’s Interior Ministry announced on 13 August that the acute search-and-rescue phase had concluded, with no further persons believed trapped under rubble; the national disaster agency (UNGRD) has since described a progressive shift toward the response and recovery phase. (This resolves an item flagged for monitoring in the initial edition of this report; see Horizon Scan.)

In a mid-crisis leadership change, President de la Espriella installed David Santiago Tamayo Roldán as permanent UNGRD director via Decree 1170 (11 August), replacing acting director Javier Pava, alongside pointed public criticism of the outgoing leadership’s management of the agency.

Open-source reporting confirms that authorities imposed curfews in Cali, Pereira, Manizales, and Armenia within hours of the mainshock, citing active looting threats, indicating that law-enforcement assets were drawn into geographically dispersed perimeter-security operations concurrently with humanitarian search-and-rescue requirements.

Comment

De la Espriella’s administration assumed the institutional response architecture of a predecessor government without crisis-tested inter-agency relationships. The mid-crisis replacement of UNGRD’s director, accompanied by unusually pointed public criticism of the outgoing leadership, is a concrete, observable instance of this transition gap rather than a purely structural inference. Weighed against this, the response nonetheless progressed through the standard 72-hour acute-rescue window on a broadly typical timeline for an earthquake of this scale, which argues against a severe, response-defining capacity failure.

The concurrent imposition of curfews across four major urban centres, Cali, Pereira, Manizales, and Armenia, signalled a significant diversion of law-enforcement and military resources toward population control at precisely the moment those same assets were required to facilitate humanitarian access to collapsed structures across the disaster zone, creating a resource-allocation tension with direct consequences for rescue timelines.

Assessment

We assess it is likely that the Espriella administration’s coordinated response capacity during the initial 72-hour window was constrained by the transition gap in institutional continuity, a judgment now supported by the concrete UNGRD leadership change rather than structural inference alone, though the response nonetheless met standard rescue-phase timelines. [MODERATE CONFIDENCE]

We now assess it is likely that aggregate international financing, an estimated USD 1.3 billion in multilateral proposals alone as of 13 August, plus bilateral pledges from more than a dozen countries, against the USD 15.5 million initial US tranche, will prove sufficient in principle to cover acute-phase and early-reconstruction costs. The operative uncertainty has shifted from pledge volume to disbursement speed and absorption capacity, given the scale of infrastructure damage and Colombia’s limited administrative bandwidth three days into a new government. [MODERATE CONFIDENCE]

Pillar 4: International Coordination

Fact

Open-source reporting confirms that the US State Department’s initial USD 15.5 million commitment has been substantially exceeded: Colombian Vice President José Manuel Restrepo reported on 12–13 August that multilateral institutions alone had presented cooperation proposals totalling USD 1.3 billion, separate from formal bilateral pledges of humanitarian aid or rescue personnel from more than a dozen individual countries.

Background reporting confirms that President de la Espriella’s inaugural policy agenda is structured around a USD 1 billion US security-assistance package tied to the newly announced “Shield of the Americas” security alliance, establishing the framework within which earthquake-response coordination and associated security-sector support are operationally embedded.

UNGRD director David Tamayo confirmed that Colombia formally requested international search-and-rescue support only from the United States, El Salvador, Ecuador, and Israel, citing a requirement for internationally certified teams. Separately, the UN and Mexico both indicated as of 12 August that they had not received formal requests for assistance despite standing readiness, and Colombia’s Foreign Minister publicly denied that aid was being accepted or declined on ideological grounds.

Comment

The 10 August event’s occurrence in Chocó department, a zone of documented strategic significance to both US counternarcotics programming and Colombian Pacific-corridor security, means that international partners are simultaneously managing a humanitarian response and a bilateral security relationship, conditions that elevate the political complexity of coordination decisions above a purely operational level.

The gap between Colombia’s narrow, formally requested search-and-rescue partner list and the broader field of governments and institutions offering assistance, combined with the public controversy over perceived ideological selectivity, is now a concrete, reported manifestation of the coordination friction this analysis anticipated, rather than a purely structural risk.

Assessment

Our initial judgment that the USD 15.5 million US emergency commitment represented an opening position rather than a ceiling is now confirmed: multilateral pledges alone have reached an estimated USD 1.3 billion as of 13 August. [HIGH CONFIDENCE]

We assess it is highly likely that international coordination has remained operationally fragmented during the acute response phase, given confirmed reporting that the UN and Mexico had not received formal aid requests as of 12 August, Colombia’s narrow four-country formal search-and-rescue request list, and the public controversy over perceived ideological selectivity in aid acceptance. [HIGH CONFIDENCE]

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HORIZON SCAN

The following warrant monitoring in the next reporting period. Items resolved since the 12 August edition are marked accordingly.

1. The transition from live-rescue to recovery-phase protocols: Colombia’s Interior Ministry declared the search-and-rescue phase concluded on 13 August. Next-cycle monitoring should shift to the resettlement and reconstruction-planning process for displaced households.
2. Disbursement tracking for the estimated USD 1.3 billion in multilateral pledges and the parallel bilateral commitments from more than a dozen countries, the next reporting cycle should track actual disbursement against pledges, not pledge totals themselves.
3. Reconciliation of the missing-persons figure: UNGRD’s first fully deduplicated count (as distinct from the volatile 195–4,000 range reported 11–13 August) will materially affect final casualty assessments.
4. The next review point for the 12-month national disaster decree, and whether Colombia’s Congress moves to shorten, extend, or otherwise act on it.
5. Whether the “ideological aid” controversy escalates, given continued Colombian government statements and opposition reaction regarding the narrow formal search-and-rescue request list.
6. UNGRD institutional stability under its new director, whether David Tamayo’s leadership stabilises coordination or introduces further disruption during the recovery phase.
7. Seismic monitoring bulletins from agencies observing the Nazca–South America convergence zone for significant aftershocks; more than 130 had been recorded as of 13 August, the largest at magnitude 5.0.
8. Indicators of organised-criminal consolidation in Chocó, the single highest-priority item carried forward from the initial edition, now entering the window in which such consolidation would be expected to become observable.

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ADDITIONAL INTELLIGENCE REQUIREMENTS

Verified Sources

• 2026 Colombia Earthquake — Wikipedia
• Colombia: Earthquake – Aug 2026 — ReliefWeb
• Colombia Earthquake Live Coverage — CNN
• Colombia Searches for Survivors — Le Monde
• United States Mobilizes Life-Saving Response to Colombia Earthquake — U.S. Department of State Official primary source confirming the USD 15.5 million breakdown and implementing partners.
• Colombia earthquake rescue efforts enter “final phase” — France 24 Most current casualty figures used in this revision.
• Colombia Draws $1.3 Billion USD in International Pledges — Finance Colombia Sources VP Restrepo directly on the multilateral pledge total.
• U.S. Embassy Colombia — Natural Disaster Alert Confirmed active and current; now on “Update 1” (11 August), superseding the initial alert cited in the prior edition.
• USGS Event Page — M 7.4, 5 km E of San José del Palmar Located and confirmed; authoritative source for magnitude, depth, and focal-mechanism data.
• OCHA Colombia Flash Updates 001–002, via UN Colombia Located and confirmed, with a specific ReliefWeb-hosted report now identified.

Remaining Verification Gaps

• ⚠️ [OPEN] A formally reconciled, deduplicated missing-persons figure has not yet been published by UNGRD as of this revision; treat all current missing-persons figures as provisional.
• ⚠️ [OPEN] A primary ungrd.gov.co communiqué for the consolidated national damage figures (140 collapsed buildings, 9,215 destroyed homes, 45,547 damaged homes) has not been directly retrieved; current sourcing is via secondary reporting that attributes these figures to UNGRD.
• ⚠️ [OPEN] The precise legislative review mechanism and date for Colombia’s 12-month disaster decree has not been independently located.

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SOURCES & METHODOLOGY

#	Source	Type	Reliability (A–F)	Credibility (1–6)	Notes
2	2026 Colombia earthquake – Wikipedia	Web/encyclopaedic	C	3	Actively updated; cross-checked against primary reporting
3	Colombia: Earthquake – Aug 2026 – ReliefWeb	Humanitarian portal	C	3	Aggregates official sitreps
4	CNN live coverage, 10–12 Aug	Web/news, live blog	C	3	Multiple updates tracked across the reporting window
5	Le Monde, 11 Aug	Web/news	C	3	International correspondent reporting
6	U.S. State Department press release, 11 Aug	Official government primary source	A	1	Confirms $15.5M breakdown and implementing partners
7	France 24, 13 Aug	Web/news	C	3	Most current casualty figures used in this revision
8	Finance Colombia, 13 Aug	Web/news, specialist financial outlet	C	3	Sources VP Restrepo directly on the multilateral pledge total
9	U.S. Embassy Colombia, Update 1, 11 Aug	Official government primary source	A	2	Confirms official USGS parameters and consular guidance
12	USGS Event Page us6000tjl2	Official scientific primary source	A	1	Authoritative magnitude, depth, and focal-mechanism data
14	OCHA Colombia Flash Updates 001–002, via UN Colombia	Humanitarian coordination body, primary	A	2	Confirms departmental-level affectation figures

Note: minor sub-figures (e.g., municipality counts) vary slightly by outlet and snapshot time even when attributed to the same UNGRD report; where sources conflicted, this revision used the figure corroborated by multiple independent outlets.

Words Expressing Probability (WEP) Reference Table

WEP language is applied only in Assessment sentences. Factual, Comment, PMEC, and Horizon Scan sections are WEP-free.

Expression	Approximate Probability
Almost certain	90–99%
Highly likely	75–89%
Likely	55–74%
Roughly even chance	45–54%
Unlikely	25–44%
Highly unlikely	10–24%
Remote	<10%

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This report monitors and documents incidents that may be relevant to international law and security assessments. It does not constitute a legal determination. All sources should be verified before operational use.