A magnitude-7.4 earthquake ripped through western Colombia on Monday morning, killing more than 130 people and injuring hundreds more in the country's most powerful quake in decades. The epicenter struck near San José del Palmar in the remote Chocó department, roughly 150 miles west of Bogotá, but the shaking was felt as far as Cali, Medellín and the capital itself.

By Tuesday, Colombian officials had confirmed at least 132 deaths and more than 570 injuries, according to the Washington Post, with the hardest-hit city, Pereira, alone reporting 60 fatalities. At least 86 buildings collapsed across the region and seven regional airports suspended operations after runways and terminals sustained structural damage.

The rupture originated roughly 110 kilometers beneath the surface inside the subducting Nazca plate — an intermediate-depth quake that the Colombian Geological Service says is the most powerful to strike the country this century, according to NBC News. Its depth spread violent shaking across a wide swath of the Andean interior rather than concentrating damage near a single fault line.

RACE TO REACH REMOTE VILLAGES

Rescue crews are struggling to reach the quake's epicenter in Chocó, one of Colombia's poorest and most rain-soaked departments, where washed-out roads and downed bridges have cut off entire communities. President Gustavo Petro's government has declared a state of emergency and mobilized military engineers, though officials warn the death toll is likely to keep climbing as search teams dig through collapsed structures in outlying towns that have yet to report in, per Al Jazeera.

In Pereira, the region's largest city, entire apartment blocks buckled and streets filled with debris and displaced families sleeping outdoors, afraid to return to structurally unsound homes. Hospitals across Risaralda and Chocó departments have been overwhelmed with crush injuries and are triaging patients in parking lots and tents.

Neighboring countries and international agencies have begun mobilizing aid, with search-and-rescue teams and field hospitals reportedly en route to the disaster zone. Aftershocks have continued to rattle the region since Monday's initial rupture, complicating rescue operations and forcing repeated evacuations of buildings already weakened by the main shock.

Colombian authorities say the full scope of the damage — and the final death toll — won't be clear until crews reach the most isolated mountain villages, some of which are still unreachable by road nearly two days after the quake struck.