Christian aid groups helping earthquake survivors in Colombia

Days after a 7.4-magnitude earthquake tore through western Colombia, the search for survivors is giving way to something harder: the long work of rebuilding lives from rubble.

Colombia’s strongest earthquake in a decade has killed hundreds of people and left thousands more without homes, and now Christian relief organizations are racing to meet the needs of those seeking shelter and clean water.

The Evangelical charity organization Samaritan’s Purse announced that it has airlifted 100,000 pounds of relief, including shelter supplies, solar lights and hygiene kits, to Colombia. 

Nick Bechert, Samaritan’s Purse’s international disaster response unit manager, told The Christian Post that he’s the only U.S. team member on the ground. Everyone else is part of a Colombian national team that has been in the country for more than a decade and has extensive experience in earthquake response.

“The team is led by mostly our Colombian national team,” Bechert said, adding that the organization is providing much-needed tarp for residents, “enough for at least 6,000 households’ worth of tarp,” he said. 

That local team, Bechert said, is coordinating with churches to distribute the supplies that arrived on a Boeing 767 cargo plane. Within a day of the earthquake, he said, the team had already heard from more than 100 pastors about what their communities needed. “So they’ve been following up with pastors who are linking them into the affected communities. So a lot of the work is going to be done through the church and at churches,” he added. 

For Bechert, that’s not just logistics. It’s strategy. He believes the physical relief effort doubles as an opening for something deeper. “Drawing communities deeper into a relationship with these pastors, with these churches,” he said, will help “meet those physical needs but link them to the churches for meeting the spiritual needs and connecting with the spiritual trauma that people are going through at this moment as well.”

The Colombian team isn’t new to this kind of work. Just weeks earlier, many of the same responders were in neighboring Venezuela after a separate earthquake there.

“The past couple of months, a lot of them have been supporting in Venezuela,” Bechert said. “So many of them had only been back for maybe a week or so. They were just starting to take a breather and get some rest and move into normal routine when the earthquake struck here.”

On the ground, Bechert described widespread structural failures: walls collapsed, roofs caved in, and damage extending well beyond city centers. “There’s a lot of larger structural damage on the buildings, but particularly people’s homes and even homes outside of the city, some of the more rural areas as well experienced damage there,” he said.

Samaritan’s Purse loaded a Boeing 767 cargo plane in Greensboro, North Carolina, on Aug. 13 with 100,000 pounds of relief supplies. More than 3,000 hygiene kits, 3,000 solar lights and 1,200 rolls of emergency tarp. 

“All of us were shocked to see the news and videos of the powerful earthquake in Colombia,” Samaritan’s Purse President Franklin Graham said in a statement provided to CP. “Samaritan’s Purse has worked in Colombia for many years and has three field offices in different areas there. I encourage you to pray for the people of this country. Many have died. People are sleeping on the streets in fear because of the strong aftershocks.”

“We can only imagine the horror, fear and shock of these families who fled into the streets and watched their homes, their schools and other buildings around them crumble right before their eyes,” he added. “They lost everything in just a few seconds, and many are grieving loved ones who were killed.”

Thousands of homes have been destroyed, Graham said, and in some of the hardest-hit communities, virtually every building has been damaged or destroyed. “Our hearts break for these people whose lives have literally been turned upside down,” he said. “As we bring help in Jesus’ Name, we want them to know that God loves them and cares for them.”

Unto, a humanitarian organization operating in 75 countries, is also mobilizing. CEO and President Al Goff, who is traveling to Colombia soon, told CP the country’s western region is facing a brutal reality: widespread power outages and, by his estimate, more than 50,000 damaged or destroyed buildings.

“The rescue workers have kind of cleared out all the people that they think they can clear out now,” Goff said, “and it’s turning from a search for survivors to just a recovery effort. Emergency services are overwhelmed.”

Goff’s other concern is the ground itself. Colombia sits along the Pacific Ring of Fire, a horseshoe-shaped band of fault lines responsible for most of the world’s earthquakes, and aftershocks remain a real threat to structures already weakened by the initial quake.

“While we’re hopeful that these earthquakes and aftershocks are coming to an end, you just never know in a situation like that if it’s going to be stable,” he said. “It could bring down buildings that had previously not come down but could because they’re already unstable.”

That uncertainty is exactly why so many people are choosing to stay on the streets rather than go back to their homes. “People are sleeping outdoors because they don’t trust the buildings that they’re in,” Goff said. “So providing tarps, tents and shelters for them in the immediate aftermath is going to be a big deal.”

Beyond shelter, Goff pointed to diapers, water filtration systems and basic infrastructure repair as urgent needs. As the emergency phase gives way to recovery, he expects the focus to shift from food, water and shelter toward helping families rebuild their homes and access psychosocial support for trauma.

But when asked what Colombians need most right now, Goff didn’t lead with supplies. “This is a God-sized problem that’s in front of them,” he said. “So getting people praying for them is job one.”