A 7.4 magnitude earthquake on the Richter scale, recorded this Monday with an epicenter near the town of San José del Palmar, in the department of Chocó, in the northwest of Colombia, has forced the suspension of activity at seven airports in the country.
According to the Civil Aeronautics, the agency responsible for the supervision and regulation of Colombian civil aviation, the affected airports are those of Pereira, Manizales, Quibdo, Armenia, Cartago, Buenaventura, and Alfonso Bonilla Aragón.
Air operations at these terminals will remain interrupted while the necessary inspections are carried out to check for possible structural damage to the infrastructure. The state agency has specified that it will continue to monitor the situation and that "it will timely inform of any news."
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) has detailed in a preliminary report that the epicenter of the earthquake, recorded around 7:34 a.m. (local time), was located five kilometers east of San José del Palmar, at a depth of 107 kilometers.
"It is very tragic what has happened to us today. We do not know, at this moment, what the real magnitude of the earthquake's impact is," said the mayor of Pereira, Mauricio Salazar, in statements collected by local media.