By Ingrid "Shortwave" Frost
Search crews in Colombia entered what officials called the "final phase" of their operation this week, as the confirmed death toll from the earthquake climbed to 265, according to Al Jazeera.
Colombian President de la Espriella pledged to set up an emergency fund to rebuild hospitals and schools destroyed in the disaster, per the same report. The scale of that rebuilding — how many structures, how much money, over what timeline — has not yet been detailed in available reporting, and we're not filling that gap with guesswork.
The quake struck a country that, days earlier, had also seen de la Espriella's newly inaugurated government commit to a very different kind of operation: War Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Wednesday that Colombia had authorized joint military operations with the United States against drug cartels, becoming the 19th member of the Americas Counter-Cartel Coalition, according to the Washington Examiner. That announcement, made at a coalition meeting in Panama, is a separate matter from the earthquake response, but it underscores a government now managing a natural disaster and a security realignment with Washington in the same news cycle.
For families still searching rubble for the missing, the numbers are what matter: 265 dead is where the count stands now, per Al Jazeera. As search teams stand down, the harder count — how many buildings, how many years to rebuild — is only beginning.
FILED FROM SOMEWHERE WITH BAD COFFEE —
— Compiled from reporting by Al Jazeera and the Washington Examiner.
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