They may have survived the earthquake, but many were left without shelter, support, or recognition
Originally published on Global Voices
Without an official figure, volunteers estimate that nearly 400 people affected by the earthquake are sheltering in La Libertad Park. Photos by Jeimi Villamizar. Colombia, 2026. Used with permission.
A crack divides the residencia on 14th Street in Pereira in two. Bricks from the boarding house’s façade and pieces of its collapsed roof lie on the ground. Windows without glass and yellow caution tape across the front warn of the risk of collapse.
From the outside, it is hard to understand why it is still standing — perhaps much like the way it remained standing for the past decade, thanks to people looking for a roof over their heads for less than COP 17,000 (USD 5) a day. Before the earth moved and turned it into a memory, one of the rooms on its three floors was home to Laura*, her two daughters* [*these three names have been changed to protect their privacy] and her husband.
On the morning of the earthquake, Laura woke up earlier than usual, restless and counting the minutes until she could meet her daughters, Mariana (10) and Luciana (8), who had spent the night at Laura’s older son’s home.
She picked up her phone, checked the time — 7:32 a.m. — and stepped into the shower. Two minutes later, a powerful jolt threw her against the wall. She tried to stay on her feet, but the movement grew stronger. She heard her husband screaming and, as the ground shook beneath her, ran out of the bathroom.
The earthquake in Colombia has been the biggest one in the last decade, and has impacted more than 400,000 people across the country. Photo by Jeimi Villavizar, Colombia, 2026. Used with permission.
Laura did not look back. With the earth still moving, she grabbed a towel to cover her naked body and ran to find her daughters. Around her, buildings in downtown Pereira, one of the most impacted cities, were collapsing. People were screaming. She could only imagine finding her daughters beneath the rubble. The walk from her home to where her daughters were staying takes approximately 40 minutes; Laura says she made it in 15.
Carolina has a similar story. The night before, as she had every night since arriving in Pereira three months earlier, she paid COP 18,000 (USD 6) for a room without a kitchen for herself, her one-and-a-half-year-old daughter and her husband. She paid for both the room and food by selling garbage bags on the street with her daughter, while her husband works on construction sites around the city.
She emerged alive from the earthquake, only to realize that her family had lost the little they had managed to build over the previous months.
Photo by Jeimi Villamizar. Colombia, 2026. Used with permission.
Meanwhile, 56-year-old Félix was picking coffee on a farm about 40 minutes from Pereira when the 7.4-magnitude, 90-second earthquake struck. Afterwards, Félix returned to the boarding house in Pereira, although he had no family in the city to search for.
When he arrived, he found it was destroyed. A small suitcase — his most valuable possession — which he had carried with him for the past decade as he moved from farm to farm looking for work, was buried beneath the rubble.
“I paid 15,000 pesos a day for a room,” he says. “Now I have nowhere to go. I had to sleep on the street; on the ground in the park. I had never slept like that in my life.”
The victims no one counted
To date, the Pereira Mayor’s Office has no estimate of how many people were living in the “pay-by-the-day” residences and were affected by the earthquake. Photo by Jeimi Villamizar. Colombia, 2026. Used with permission.
Without knowing one another, Félix, Laura and Carolina became three of the 400 people sheltering in La Libertad Park, between 12th and 14th Streets in downtown Pereira, just a few blocks from their former homes.
The figure is unofficial. The shelter is not one of the locations authorized by the Pereira Mayor’s Office, and volunteers have been responsible for counting the people staying there.
On the night of the earthquake, just meters from the park, neighborhood residents removed rubble from a boarding house that had completely collapsed, along with a drugstore and a bakery on the ground floor. Volunteers searched for signs of life among the ruins of a building where people paid by the day for a place to sleep.
Two days later, together with official rescuers, they recovered the bodies of 17 people. They were among the 111 people killed by the earthquake in Pereira.
According to the Pereira Mayor’s Office, approximately 600 buildings were preliminarily identified as being at risk of collapse. Photo by Jeimi Villavizar. Colombia, 2026. Used with permission.
Laura says three of her coworkers slept there. Although she does not know their names, she has not seen them since the earthquake. She fears they were among the bodies recovered.
“Nobody came to find out how many people were sleeping in the affected residences, how many people now have nowhere to live, or how many were trapped beneath the rubble,” says Edward Molina, a local volunteer. “They are invisible to the government and society. People judge them because they are sex workers, homeless, or recyclers.”
Edward and other volunteers say that while they tried to cope with the disaster on their own, attention was focused on the situation two blocks away, at the Hotel Dibenni, one of the area’s most luxurious hotels and one of 66 buildings that collapsed in the capital of Risaralda.
Without an official figure, volunteers estimate that around 400 people affected by the earthquake are sheltering in La Libertad Park. Photo by Jeimi Villavizar. Colombia, 2026. Used with permission.
The ground beneath a tree in the park was where Félix slept during the first week after the earthquake. Fortunately, he says, food was available thanks to volunteers who arrived from across the country, but every night frightened him.
Félix, 1.70 meters (5.5 feet) tall and stocky from years of physical labor, breaks down when remembering those first days. Tears run down his face, and he does not try to stop them.
“People came here giving away tents, blankets and mattresses, but they never looked at me,” he recalls. “I was sleeping on the ground, wearing the same clothes I had worn for a week, and people looked at me with disgust. Everyone thought I was a drug addict. I had never felt so despised.”
Only Edward noticed him. He had spent three days clearing rubble alongside his 15-year-old son when he saw hundreds of people arriving at the park, many with nothing.“I realized that the lives that needed saving were not under the rubble. They were here,” Edward says. “No one sees them as human beings or as people who deserve help.”
How do you rebuild your future when your shelter isn’t safe?
111 people died in Pereira following the August 10 earthquake. That figure is part of a total of 314 fatalities across the country. Photo by Jeimi Villavizar. Colombia, 2026. Used with permission.
Three months earlier, Carolina had been living on a farm an hour from Pereira. Five years ago, she arrived in Colombia from Caracas, Venezuela. Although she is willing to work “at anything,” she feels the earthquake changed her plans, not only in Colombia, but also in Venezuela.
“I was going to return because my oldest daughter is going to give birth to her first child, but after that, there is no city I can return to,” Carolina says as she tries to find a new mattress for her tent. “My sister managed to get out, but several of my cousins are missing […] I don’t believe they are alive.”
As children play in the park, the volunteer medical team advises teachers to use face masks. They say they have already recorded cases of tuberculosis, influenza and other respiratory illnesses. The crowded tents, lack of bathrooms and drinking water, and food cooked outdoors in Pereira’s rain and sun have created conditions in which diseases can spread.
“This is one of Pereira’s most vulnerable populations. The shelter’s conditions have led us to find withdrawal syndromes and respiratory illnesses such as tuberculosis,” says Alejandra Gutierrez, one of three volunteer doctors at the shelter. “Conditions are especially difficult for children. The rain during the first few days made things worse, and many of them have digestive illnesses, gastroenteritis and diarrhea.”
She says that although the Health Secretariat has made progress with vaccinations, volunteers are handling treatment on their own. They see up to 30 patients a day, not only from the shelter but also from the surrounding areas.
Hernán Giraldo, father of Juan Felipe Giraldo, the young man from Bogotá who died following the collapse of the Dibenni Hotel in Pereira. Photo by Jeimi Villavizar. Colombia, 2026. Used with permission.
Two weeks after the earthquake, the first government institutions arrived at La Libertad Park: the Ombudsman’s Office, the Directorate for Risk Management (DIGER) and the Colombian Family Welfare Institute (ICBF). Although officials from these institutions said they had been present since the first day, volunteers and survivors said they had received no official assistance until then.
After the Pereira Mayor’s Office announced that not everyone staying in the park had been affected by the earthquake, The institutions’ goal was to identify the population and transfer people to official shelters. Some people, however, said they had had negative experiences when authorities tried to take them to one of the seven official shelters.
Others, including Laura and Carolina, said that even without having had a bad experience during this emergency, they would not return to a shelter. Laura spent the COVID-19 pandemic in a shelter after arriving from Ecuador. She says it felt “like being in prison.” Carolina had a similar experience during her migration: “They take everything you have. You go in with nothing and you come out with nothing.”