Earthquake in Colombia kills over 100 people

0:03Alejandro Eder:Hello and welcome to NewsHour. It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service studios in central London. I'm Tim Franks. And we're beginning with the news that a powerful earthquake has rocked Western Colombia. This is what we know so far. At 7.34 in the morning local time, a 7.4 magnitude quake hit the Choco region. Within the last couple of hours, the Colombian president, Abolado de la Espriella, has said that 111 people have been killed. That's the number so far. 61 buildings, he says, have collapsed. 200 kilometres south from the epicentre is the city of Kali. On Friday, it was the place that the new president chose for his inauguration.

0:47Alejandro Eder:He reportedly wanted to signal his intent to take on the criminal gangs that have long operated in the west of the country. Today, the video that has emerged from Kali shows just how strong the tremors must have been because you see, well, one where a large building home to a health care provider just collapses onto the ambulances on the street below.

1:15Alejandro Eder:You can hear the screams slightly muffled, but you could definitely hear the screams as that building collapses in front of the onlookers. To the north is the city of Manizales. This is what one resident there, Angelica, told the BBC. I was in a hotel at the moment. It was moving quite strongly and everyone was screaming. And then as it stopped, I could look through the window and saw some dust coming out of the neighbouring buildings. One of the cathedral's towers bent over. The situation is a bit strange. We don't know exactly what to do. And the flights are cancelled. The airport is collapsed.

2:01Alejandro Eder:That resident of Manzales, the first message from President de la Espraya was on social media to say that he was travelling immediately to the affected region. He promised that more help is on the way.

2:15I have ordered the suspension of my entire schedule in the nation's capital so that I can focus on the natural disaster that is currently ravaging our long-suffering Colombian people. I have called an emergency meeting of the United Command Center. I'll be there with my entire team making decisions and taking action. I will personally lead these efforts to bring solutions to our people.

2:39Alejandro Eder:Fellow Colombians, you're not alone. Our correspondent in Bogota is from our BBC Mundo, our Latin American colleagues, Jose Carlos Cueto. It's several hours now on from the earthquake, but just before we came on air, I asked him what the latest is. Well, the latest is that we have that figure confirmed of at least 111 people who have been killed in this tragedy, and apart from 87 who are thought to be injured. injured. And sadly, that doesn't seem to be the full picture as many buildings have been reportedly collapsed with people struck and trapped under the rubble. So as the hours go by here in Colombia, people are scared and fearing that these figures of the tragedy can get worse.

3:33Alejandro Eder:Clearly, these are very early hours in all this. And as we'll hear from our next guest, I mean, the first 48 hours are absolutely key. But are the initial indications that compared to the quake, the twin quakes that hit neighboring Venezuela just a month or so ago, that firstly, that the buildings seem to, you know, more buildings seem to have survived? The building regulations are a bit better and that also the rescue services are able to respond a bit more quickly. Yes, exactly. I think, well, it's early to establish comparisons in any case, but we can at least for sure say and compare, for example, both the economic situations of Colombia and Venezuela is not similar at all.

4:22Venezuela has been suffering a severe economic crisis, which has had implications in the infrastructure, in the buildings, and the way they respond to natural disasters. Colombia is not in that scenario. And the cities that are basically more affected are cities that are known for having good infrastructure. Cali, for example, is like the third city in terms of population in the country with a very good airport. For example, Pereira Manizales that are located in the coffee growing area, which is, you know, one of, let's say, most developed areas in Colombia with a lot of tourism and long decades of, you know, building a good infrastructure.

5:03So it's not comparable to the case of Venezuela. It's not comparable to the situation either. Like the twin earthquake that struck Venezuela for now seems to have been more serious than the one that has struck Colombia today.

5:17Alejandro Eder:BBC's Jose Carlos Cueto in Bogotá. Well, also, shortly before we came on air, we managed to get through to the mayor of Cali, Alejandro Eder. As I mentioned, it's about 200 kilometres from the epicentre. He began by telling me what the tremor had felt like for him. I did feel it. I was actually just arriving at a radio show for an interview, and we were on the air, and as soon as the quake struck, Well, it felt like a very small tremor, which lasted quite a while, and it kept on picking up speed. So it was actually quite a shake. And, I mean, did you know immediately what it was and what you and those around you were expected to do?

6:02I mean, I knew what it was. It was obviously a strong tremor. We were in a pretty modern building, so, you know, I didn't actually feel unsafe at any point. but um so it was difficult to gauge what the effect had actually been on cali but unfortunately it felt very hard around the city we've had actually 32 confirmed building collapses we have people trapped in these buildings we've managed to rescue 38 people thus far and unfortunately we do have some some fatal victims from this quake right as i speak to you now can

6:38Alejandro Eder:Can you tell me what the number of confirmed casualties is in Kali? Unfortunately, no, not yet, because we're still in the evaluation phase, but also we're still very much focused on the search and rescue phase. We're still searching around the city. It's a very large city, and it was a very strong quake, but the city held up quite well. That kind of makes it a little bit harder to find the victims and the collapsed buildings, because it's kind of like finding needles in a haystack right now. And I mean, I presume some of these buildings at the very least are multi-storey, which will make the search all the more difficult.

7:17Some of them are multi-storied, unfortunately. And these first 48 hours are key to getting people out, to getting people to safety. We're tending to this emergency primarily with our own firefighters and our own search and rescue teams. We have a UZAR search and rescue team here in Cali and we're waiting for more teams to arrive from other major cities in Colombia.

7:43Alejandro Eder:And it's obviously something that you and your municipality prepare for, but one never quite knows the scale and the challenges and just how far you think you are able to meet the need right now. I mean, do you have enough fire and rescue crew and enough lifting equipment to do the job? Are you simply going to have to wait until you can get help from elsewhere? Our fire and rescue crews are working. We're working alongside the Colombian Red Cross, the Colombian Army, and also the Civil Defense Force, which is a volunteer emergency response team. But we are still waiting for additional search and rescue teams from the rest of Colombia.

8:28Our teams are very well trained. We actually sent our search and rescue team, we just sent it to Venezuela. So they have very recent experience in these types of events. I remember when we sent our firefighters to Venezuela, I spoke about it with the fire chief and I said, you know, this will be good training for our guys. I hope we don't have to use them. And look at this, you know, just a few weeks later, here we are.

8:53Alejandro Eder:Obviously, Western Colombia is a very tectonically active. region. So I guess people in the city may well have been expecting this. But can you just tell me how the city is functioning beyond those collapsed buildings? Are things sort of still working? Are people behaving reasonably, as far as you're aware? The city is functioning relatively well, given the circumstances. Obviously, we're tending to the emergency. This isn't like a mass collapse of buildings everywhere around the city. We have 32 confirmed building collapses. We have many other buildings that were affected structurally, apparently, but now we have to go in and do that evaluation as well to see how many people need to be relocated, at least temporarily.

9:42Alejandro Eder:The mayor of Cali, one of the cities badly hit by this earthquake, Alejandro Eder. Dr Morgan Page is a seismologist at the US Geological Survey in Pasadena, California. What's her sense of just how big this earthquake was? Well, this earthquake was at an intermediate depth of about 110 kilometers. So that's quite a bit deeper than the doublet that happened in Venezuela earlier this summer. Because it's so deep, that means the shaking at the surface is not as strong as it would be if it was closer to the surface, but it does mean that shaking is felt over a pretty wide area. And we estimate that about 1.5 million people were exposed to very strong shaking in this quake.

10:29Alejandro Eder:Gosh, 1.5 million. Right. Okay. So I guess the concern, and you must be aware of this more than many others, but is that with earthquakes, and I guess with so many people affected, that there's a fear that we get these initial casualty figures, but that it may well rise? Yeah, it's still quite early. So we do expect the initial fatalities, which are now at 111, to rise. Just based on the population exposure and the shaking, the USGS initially estimated that the most likely outcome was between 100 and 1 ,000 fatalities. And we've already, unfortunately passed that 100 number. And we expect, given that there are at least 60 collapsed buildings, that unfortunately that number will go up.

11:18Alejandro Eder:I guess though the fact that Western Columbia, I mean, these earthquakes from what I understand are relatively regular and frequent in occurrence will mean that building regulations should be stronger and should make a difference. Yeah, it all really comes down to not just the shaking, but yeah, that's right, the level of the building construction. The newer buildings in these earthquakes that have better construction tend to fare a lot better than the older buildings. You know, it's really how well we engineer the buildings that determines how many fatalities and injuries there are. And just briefly, if you would, the epicentre is relatively near the coast.

12:02Alejandro Eder:Has there been any monitoring of a tsunami or tidal wave threat? No, I don't know of any tsunami. It was under land rather than offshore. So I wouldn't expect there to be a tsunami in an earthquake like this. Dr. Morgan Page, seismologist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Pasadena, California. We've got a live page up on this on our website, bbc.com forward slash news. So you can get the latest developments there. Latest entry has the Colombian vice president saying that his country is working tirelessly to stand by every community struck by this tragedy. You can also see some of the footage generated by people's mobile phones that is embedded in the coverage as well.

12:51Alejandro Eder:if you want to see what some of the damage looks like. You're listening to News Hour.

13:00Alejandro Eder:And coming up on the programme, the Hollywood actor Michael Sheen on why he's digging deeper into the story of alleged toxic chemical contamination in his birthplace in South Wales. Finding out more and more about the possibility that these communities and the places where this happened had a pattern to it, whether it was in Wales or in Anniston, Alabama or wherever, that this dumping tended to happen in places where there was a history of chronic illness, so it could be masked potentially. They also tended to be places that didn't necessarily have much of a voice that wouldn't be heard. That interview with Michael Sheen, Michael Sheen, yes, Michael Sheen, not Martin Sheen.

13:42Alejandro Eder:Michael Sheen coming up in just a few minutes. It's one headline to remind you of. Colombia's president has declared a state of emergency after an earthquake killed more than 100 people and caused significant damage.

14:00Alejandro Eder:This is NewsHour from the BBC. And the BBC has seen evidence that suggests a South African police detective was killed by the country's special forces. France Matipo is looking into their alleged role in the disappearance of a suspected Islamic State group militant before he, France, was found shot dead in his car on 6 August 2023, almost exactly three years ago. Matipa's family and former colleagues are now demanding justice. Seven Special Forces soldiers and one other are due to stand trial in connection with the detective's murder. And in addition to those charges, seven of the defendants, along with four others, are accused of abducting and murdering the suspected IS militant.

14:41Alejandro Eder:They denied the allegations. For the BBC World Service, Dino Martani has been investigating in South Africa.

14:53So this is the final road on Mathiba's last journey. It is indeed. And we are about to, in just a few metres, approach the site where he died. On a Sunday evening in August 2023, Lieutenant Colonel Franz Matiba was found shot dead in his car by the side of the N1 motorway outside Pretoria. The 53-year-old detective was a veteran of the Hawks, an elite police unit whose responsibilities include investigating crimes against the state. He was the finest man. He was a trusted and loyal man. That is how Franz was. Brigadier Paulina Sekopela was Matiba's commanding officer. She says Matiba was killed while investigating whether Special Forces soldiers were behind the disappearance of suspected IS militant Abdallah Abadiga in December 2022.

15:49Matiba had applied for a court order to force the military to hand over information. But after one meeting with the Special Forces, he made a chilling prediction to his boss.

16:08Police say that two days later, on the 6th of August 2023, Matiba was lured to a petrol station in eastern Pretoria, where he believed he would meet an informant. But they didn't show up. BBC Africa Eye has seen CCTV pictures which show Matiba driving away on the motorway with a black BMW following him. He was shot dead shortly after. Seven Special Forces soldiers and one other are due to stand trial in connection with the detective's murder. Of those, seven are accused, alongside four others, of abducting and murdering Aberdeega. They deny the allegations. Give me a lighter. You can just light the papers.

16:54Over a backyard barbecue, Colonel Tolly Fruchtenberg, a former counter-terrorism police chief, tells BBC Africa Eye that South Africans should be concerned by Matiba's murder. The late killers of Matiba is a person that's supposed to protect us. Who can we trust? Can we trust our government? He believes Matiba was close to uncovering the truth behind Aberdeega's disappearance. Colonel Fruktenberg has revealed that before he went missing, Aberdee was being used as an intelligence asset. But he thinks his handlers underestimated him. I cannot say which intelligence organisation used him. Which intelligence organisation, domestic or international, I will go that far.

17:39Most probably he's laying somewhere in a cellar grave. The BBC contacted the Department of Home Affairs and the South African National Defence force for comment. They did not respond. Meanwhile, three years on from Matiba's death, his daughter Basitsana says her family are still waiting for his killers to be held to account. I'm never going to hug my dad anymore. Why? Why my dad? Because he was doing his job. We need justice. We need justice.

18:16Alejandro Eder:And that report was by Dino Martani for the BBC World Service. Almost 60 years ago in the United Kingdom, a farming consultant called Douglas Gowan was called to look at a badly deformed calf at a farm in South Wales. Gowan came to believe that the cause was the dumping of highly toxic chemicals long since banned in the United Kingdom. but they were produced at that time at a Welsh factory. Over years of campaigning, he fought to raise awareness of the impact of these forever chemicals, as they're known. Decades later, at home in Los Angeles, the Welsh actor Michael Sheen was working in Hollywood and stumbled upon the story online.

18:58Alejandro Eder:He chased down Douglas Gowan and asked if he could speak to him. Come quickly, was the reply. I only have months to live. It led to a BBC podcast and then, as the journey has continued, it has taken Sheen back to South Wales and to Alabama and to now a new BBC documentary. Martin Sheen has been telling my colleague Henry Seffman what drew him initially to the story. There were two parts to what was really hooking me. One was that if this was true and what was the picture that was emerging, that this wasn't about something just historical. historical. This was a present danger and very much potentially a future danger.

19:40And then the more I found out about it, it started to push all kinds of buttons in me. So obviously, the fact that it was happening sort of just up the road from where I grew up, it turns out that when I was born, and I was born in Newport in South Wales, Douglas was there. He was doing his investigations and exploratory stuff around that time about the Monsanto plant in Newport. So, you know, without me knowing, I was I was connected to it. But finding out more and more about the possibility that these communities and the places where this happened had a pattern to it, whether it was in Wales or in Anniston, Alabama or wherever, that this dumping tended to happen in places where there was a history of of chronic illness.

20:23so it could be masked potentially they also tended to be places that didn't necessarily have much of a voice that wouldn't be heard they tended to be places that you know were desperate for employment so yeah so it was a combination of factors really I think. And you mentioned Aniston Alabama there because one of the things you do in this documentary is you go to Alabama and you meet people who'd been waging a pretty similar campaign in Alabama to the campaign that you encountered in Wales. Did it feel like essentially the same frustrations even across that wide Atlantic Ocean? Well, of course, the story of what happened for the community in Aniston, Alabama is different to what's been going on, particularly in Wales, in that they were the first ones to actually take a case to court, take Monsanto to court and get compensation.

21:11But they are a long, long way down the track from where things are at, certainly in Wales. And just to see, I spoke to Donald Stewart, who was one of the attorneys who represented the community over there. And to see him breaking down in tears when I'm asking him about, you know, why was this community chosen? Why did they do it here? And him saying, because they have no voice. Our chemist, Dave Megson, who did the testing over here and tested my own blood, when he was describing the results of the tests, seeing him, you know, start to break down as well. You don't expect to see these sort of things.

21:45But then when I actually sat there and I was told what I've got in me and what the more dangerous ones are and which ones of those I've got and the levels they're at and explained that that is not a safe amount. That is just what you would expect to find anywhere. I was I was really shocked. But then, of course, when we saw the results for other people, people who might be even more exposed to it and saw the kinds of levels there, that was incredibly shocking. Did you find out new information working on this anew? I mean, there's a moment in the documentary, which is in real time, it's totally authentic, where I was in Aniston.

22:22I set up, you know, a call with Dan and Lucy. We're talking. They're back in the UK. They tell me that they just discovered an hour before that when production was shut down in Aniston, it was at that point that they just went, OK, we'll just do it somewhere else. We'll do it in Newport, which is where I was born and brought up. What do you hope will come from the release of this documentary? Well, I hope that people will be as shocked and outraged about this as I am and will want to see something done about it.

22:50Alejandro Eder:And that was the actor Michael Sheen. He was speaking to Henry Zeffman. You're listening to NewsHour from the BBC World Service. Welcome back to NewsHour. You may well recall that one of our big stories of last month was the youth-led protests in the Indian capital Delhi, and indeed across the country, sparked by the leaks of medical exam papers and eventually leading to the resignation of the Education Minister. Well, the protests over exams are continuing in one part of the country. In the eastern state of Jharkhand, demonstrators have been on the streets furious about alleged manipulation of civil service exams.

23:28Alejandro Eder:Now officials have deployed additional police around the state legislature and have used tear gas and water cannon to try to disperse the protesters. Surabi Kesar is a senior lecturer in economics at Soas University here in London and an expert on India's labour markets and economy. I think they're quite significant and they are in fact reflecting the similar sort of crisis of livelihood that we were seeing in the Delhi Jantharmanta protests. Right. A crisis in livelihood, but also presumably a crisis in sort of faith among young people, which must be particularly worrying for the authorities.

24:07Yes, absolutely. I mean, to kind of give you some figures that India, of course, we know has been a very high growing economy, but only about 10 to 12 percent of Indians are in secure formal employment. So for decades, of course, the growth did not produce, you know, formal jobs for farmers and informal workers and vast sections of the population. But what is particularly interesting is that there was still a promise to the aspirational and the middle classes that if you get educated, you acquire a degree and you move into expanding professional and service economy and you can have upward mobility.