The U.S. Department of State announced this Friday an additional 11 million dollars in humanitarian assistance for Colombia, bringing the total U.S. aid following the devastating earthquake on Monday to 26.5 million dollars.
The magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck the western part of the country on August 10, with its epicenter near San José del Palmar, in the Chocó department.
The death toll exceeded 260 dead and nearly 500 missing as of August 13, with more than 1,600 buildings damaged and at least 61 completely collapsed.
The additional funds will be allocated for food assistance, healthcare, protection, shelter, and post-earthquake structural assessments.
Assistance is channeled through partners such as Catholic Relief Services, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the International Organization for Migration, UNICEF, the World Food Programme, and World Vision.
The first package, worth 15.5 million dollars, was announced on Tuesday.
Of that amount, three million provided through Catholic Relief Services come from a global assistance fund previously allocated to that organization.
In addition to direct funding, the United States had already contributed 200 million dollars to Colombia's Common Fund of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), as part of a global contribution of 3.8 billion to that agency, resources that can also be allocated to needs generated by the earthquake.
As part of the logistical response, the Department of State activated support from Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) to transport supplies from its prepositioning warehouse in Miami to Colombia.
The first flight departed this Friday from Homestead Air Base in Miami-Dade County, loaded with shelter materials, water, and hygiene supplies.
The shipment also includes hundreds of Starlink kits to provide high-speed connectivity to humanitarian organizations and the Colombian government, under a memorandum of understanding signed between Starlink and the Department of State in June 2026 for disaster response.
Upon their arrival, the IOM and the World Food Programme will oversee the last-mile distribution.
In parallel, two technical teams from Urban Search and Rescue —from Fairfax County (Virginia) and Los Angeles (California)— arrived in Colombia on Wednesday and are operating in Pereira, providing coordination, communications, and structural engineering support to the efforts of the Colombian government.
The U.S. Embassy in Bogotá confirmed the presence of those teams: "Members of VATF1 and LACOFD are in Pereira providing support in coordination and information management, as well as medical expertise, in structural evaluation and rescue, in support of the Colombian government's search and rescue efforts."
The humanitarian response occurs at a time of deep bilateral restructuring.
The new Colombian president Abelardo de la Espriella, who took office just three days before the earthquake, has radically reoriented his country's foreign policy: he announced the severing of diplomatic relations with Cuba and Nicaragua, and Colombia joined the "Shield of the Americas," the regional security alliance promoted by Washington.
In that context of rapprochement, the United States announced its intention to allocate 1 billion dollars in security assistance to Colombia —subject to Congressional approval— to combat drug trafficking and organized crime, an initiative that the Colombian Presidency described as "the most significant support in decades for the bilateral alliance."
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