earthquakes

TWO earthquakes have rocked Granada, causing destruction across the region and the closure of popular attractions.

With a series of aftershocks also recorded, is it safe to travel to Spain? Here’s everything you need to know.

Where are the earthquakes in Spain?

Granada in Andalusia has been affected by multiple earthquakes in the last five days.

The first earthquake hit the region over the weekend with a magnitude of 5.0 with its epicentre in Alhendín.

On August 15, a state of emergency was declared in the southern city as parts of buildings collapsed, rocks crushed cars and residents and holidaymakers were evacuated.

The tremor was felt across Andalusia and as far as Madrid, with locals reporting shakes in Malaga, Seville, Cordoba, Jaen and Almeria.

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It was then followed by a series of aftershocks.

On August 18 another powerful 4.6-magnitude earthquake hit Granada which left at least three people injured.

At the very centre of the earthquake was the small town of Gojar, a municipality around five miles south of the city of Granada.

Hotels and council buildings open to the public were forced to evacuate following the scare.

In a statement on X, the Granada City Council said: “In response to the latest seismic movements recorded in the province, the Granada City Council has agreed, as a preventive measure, to the temporary closure of all municipal buildings and facilities open to the public.”

One of the attractions that closed was parts of Alhambra, a fortress which is now a popular tourist attraction.

In Calle Navas, which is one of the most popular tourist streets in the city, bars were closed as authorities were concerned about falling debris.

Granada Cathedral remains closed while its exterior is examined.

Two 4 and 4.2-magnitude aftershocks also hit nearby Churriana de la Vega and Alhendín.

Is it safe to travel to Spain right now?

The travel advice for Spain remains unchanged. You can find all general information on the official FCDO website. 

Are flights still going to Spain?

Yes, Granada Federico Garcia Lorca Airport remains open with flights operating as scheduled.

What if I have a holiday to Spain booked?

As the Foreign Office has not warned against travel to Spain, there are no special circumstances in place for holidaymakers to cancel their trip and receive a full refund.

Depending on what travel insurance you have, your policy might include natural disaster cover.

If so, your insurance policy should cover you for when you are unable to reach your holiday destination due to natural disasters, like wildfires and earthquakes.

So it is worth checking your travel insurance policy.

Can I cancel my trip?

If you want to cancel your trip or holiday, it is best to contact your airline and/or holiday provider.

Companies do not have an obligation to refund bookings unless Government advice changes.

Joseph Paintsil scored a short-handed goal in the 79th minute to lead the Galaxy to a 1-0 victory over the San Jose Earthquakes on Wednesday night.

Paintsil used assists from rookie defender Harbor Miller and Marco Reus to find the net for the fifth time this season. Miller’s helper was his second, while Reus collected his seventh.

The Galaxy (6-8-7) were forced to play a man down from the 45th minute on after midfielder Lucas Sanabria was tagged with a pair of yellow cards in the final nine minutes of the first half.

JT Marcinkowski saved five shots for the Galaxy for his third clean sheet in 16 starts this season.

Hirving “Chucky” Lozano started in his first home match for the Galaxy after coming off the bench last time out in his debut.

Angus Gunn totaled six saves for San Jose (10-7-3) in his fifth MLS start. The 30-year-old surrendered 12 goals in his first four outings.

The Galaxy ended an 0-3-3 winless skid and won for the first time since beating the Sounders 2-0 in Seattle on May 16.

San Jose has dropped three in a row and is 0-4-1 since July 1.

The two clubs played to a 1-1 draw in San Jose earlier this season.

The interim government is still upset that the coverage of the disaster’s aftermath showed its faults in plain sight. So, it was answered by a manufactured lie. The State media system released a short “documentary” titled “Autopsy of a Lie”, claiming that the negligence in the official response to the June 24^th earthquakes is just a false narrative pushed by the media. 

In a fact-checking analysis to debunk it, Cazadores de Fake News reports the interim government is fishing to isolate quotes from the UN and the US officers as proof that the international community praised a State response “that existed, but was perceived by large parts of the affected population as insufficient.”

The propaganda effort to turn around the domestic and global backlash on the State’s reaction to the earthquakes merged with the officially-launched “reconstruction phase,” with both the Venezuela Reborn Plan and the accompanying economic assistance in the form of credits. However, the regime is not only trying to save its face, but using the earthquakes as a subject to focus attention on how they want to be seen, and remove it from where they don’t want eyes. 

The disaster made its entrance into the dialogue talks between delegations of the 2015 National Assembly (picked by the Trump administration) and the interim government: when announcing the start of the first round of talks on August 1st, “attention to the double earthquake” was not only put on the agenda, but placed at the top. “Strengthening of democracy” and “political rights and guarantees”, the issues that many see as the core reason for this process in the first place, were put as second and third, respectively.

On August 12, the first round of talks ended with a couple of agreements: the first one was a joint effort to recover the gold reserves held by the UK in the Bank of England for the quake’s recovery. This one seems like a confirmation of what Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said back on July 30, that one of the main positions of the government’s delegation during the dialogue talks was the lifting of most of the economic sanctions still in place.

“These are not times for polarization to insist; these are not times for miserly exploitation, these are times to lend a hand. And we’ll see that the biggest comfort to the pain that afflicts our souls is the rebirth,” Jorge Rodríguez said on July 24.

The second one was the beginning of a process that could eventually lead to the renovation of the Venezuelan Supreme Court (TSJ), seen as the first concrete step toward establishing a new electoral authority in the near future, a major achievement that cannot be underestimated. 

The introduction of the seismic disaster in the talks’ agenda might signal to the chavista base that the regime is controlling the matter, and looking to compensate for any other concessions made. 

On the other hand, what happened on June 24 could serve as a plausible pretext to avoid necessary reforms or flexibilize restrictions that Venezuelans have struggled with for many years is understandable for some, as economist Ricardo Hausmann told last month to Forbes Centroamérica:

“What happened in Venezuela is a human and economic tragedy… But the biggest risk is that the earthquake could become an excuse to continue depriving Venezuelans of their rights.”

This brings another aspect to consider: the open use of the tragedy for political messaging.

It’s normal that in times when a nation suffers some sort of calamity, that a response by those in power is to rally around national unity in times of crisis. This also happened in Venezuela after June 24, with both Delcy and Jorge Rodriguez repeatedly making public calls in that regard.

For example, Jorge Rodriguez said on July 24 in commemoration of the quakes’ first month: “These are not times for polarization to insist; these are not times for miserly exploitation, these are times to lend a hand. And we’ll see that the biggest comfort to the pain that afflicts our souls is the rebirth.” The use of the last word isn’t casual, as it was already in use for several weeks in State media and came a couple of weeks before the actual reconstruction plan was introduced.

But given the precedents when chavismo used this kind of messaging before, this is likely less targeted to the overall citizenry at large and instead focused on holding their internal coalition together. This has worked well with the higher echelons of power structures but for certain parts of the larger chavista movement, this message rings hollow in the wake of the cozy relation between the regime and the Trump administration. And they’re making themselves noticed.

They’re already doing that with the most pressing issue in most parts of the country: the electric crisis, which in the last week saw an increase in both the length of blackouts and the power bill.

On June 28, a group of former chavista officials (including former Vice-President Elias Jaua) signed a document titled “Declaration of Maracay” under the name Voices For National Independence, demanding the defense of national sovereignty and the Constitution, in response to “the situation of tutelage the country currently faces. The text called for a “wider national unity”. Early this month, there was a public demonstration in Caracas echoing those very same points.

After a month and half since the disaster, the interim government remains committed to navigating the next few months by using it as a narrative device that could help them weather the surging amount of problems ahead but exposing at length some of its previous failures. At the moment, they’re already doing that with the most pressing issue in most parts of the country: the electric crisis, which in the last week saw an increase in both the length of blackouts and the power bill.

The governors of Aragua and Carabobo pointed at the damage caused by the June 24 quakes to the electricity generation system as one of the reasons behind it. Diosdado Cabello made the same talking point a few days later, while also blaming the Súper Niño event.

As the State is adjusting the effects of the disaster into other issues, public opinion is putting the magnifying glass on its handling of the doublet earthquake. Neighboring Colombia recently suffered a terrible seismic event of its own, but comparisons between how the two nations and their respective governments responded soon started to appear.

Bogota, Colombia – One week after a magnitude 7.4 earthquake rocked western Colombia, rescue efforts continue despite the razor-thin chances of survival.

The disaster response, however, is entering a new phase as rescue teams wind down operations and aid organisations begin focusing on housing those made homeless by the earthquake and providing basic necessities.

While official data reveals vast destruction of homes, schools, hospitals, and businesses, the full scale of the devastation continues to be assessed.

Fifteen of Colombia’s 32 provinces were affected by the earthquake, which killed at least 289 people and injured 4,187.

The earthquake struck San Jose del Palmar, a rural town in Colombia’s Pacific region, and devastated swaths of nearby cities like Pereira, Quibdo, and Cali.

In total, 127,557 homes were damaged, and were 26,945 destroyed. The disaster also devastated other institutions, including 285 health centres and 2,838 educational facilities.

Economic infrastructure sustained significant damage, with 407 roads, 92 water supply systems, 44 vehicular bridges, and five airports affected.

In the past week, emergency response teams have carried out an unrelenting rescue effort that has saved 354 lives.

As of Sunday night, 143 people remain unaccounted for, according to government figures, though an unofficial online database called Colombia Te Busca (Colombia is looking for you) puts the number of missing at more than 3,000.

“It has been a gruelling week, with little time to rest, as we’ve been focused on searching for, locating, and rescuing potential victims,” said Sergeant Joel Bustamente, who is leading the Bogota Fire Department’s deployment in Cali.

He added that the chances of finding life under the rubble have dropped significantly, and response teams’ priorities are shifting towards a medium-term emergency.

“Certain search-and-rescue operations are no longer necessary, and we have now moved on to a phase in which reconstruction, demolition, and other types of operations… will begin,” said Bustamente.

In some places, such as the seven-storey Vanessa Building in Cali, efforts to find survivors have been paused altogether.

“Search and rescue operations have been suspended since Friday. They are now in the phase of recovering bodies,” said Enrique Zapata, head of logistics at Cali-based health NGO SARES, who has been helping with the emergency response at the Vanessa Building.

While the chances of finding life under the rubble drop sharply after the first 72 hours following an earthquake, others still hope.

“We never lose hope,” said Maximiliano Herrera, a volunteer rescuer in Cali, who added that the teams in charge had said the window for survival could be as long as 15 days.

In recent days, he said, local rescue efforts have been boosted by international teams from countries like Israel, the United States, and Mexico.

Housing the homeless

With more than 120,000 families affected by the earthquake, authorities are under pressure to shelter the homeless.

“In terms of long-term continuity or a medium-term response, the priority right now is clearly shelter and refuge,” said Egido Sanz, country director for Colombia at ActionAid, a UK-based anti-poverty NGO.

In cities like Cali and Pereira, local authorities have converted spaces such as sports stadiums and community centres into temporary shelters.

Veronica Echeverry, who oversees a shelter at a community hall in Cali, said that they have received help from citizens, hospitals, and local authorities.

The refuge doubles as an aid collection point, receiving and distributing donations of food, water, hygiene supplies and clothes.

“This support network has allowed us to respond immediately to some of the most urgent needs of the affected families,” said Echeverry.

But she also noted that few of those who have lost their homes have needed to go to shelters, largely because they come from wealthier areas and can depend on family and friends for housing.

Today, only two people are staying at the shelter, which has 11 beds.

Neglected regions

While demand for shelter is limited in major cities like Cali and Pereira, Echeverry said other areas desperately need assistance.

In places like Choco – Colombia’s poorest department – the earthquake has hit especially hard due to existing challenges.

“It is a crisis that comes on top of another major crisis that already existed,” said ActionAid’s Sanz.

Choco was not only the epicentre of the earthquake; it is also a hotbed for armed conflict, drug trafficking and illegal gold mining.

Cities like Quibdo, the provincial capital, are a hub for people displaced by violence. In the city of roughly 130,000 people, some 2,723 homes were damaged, 1,337 of which are now uninhabitable.

But residents say the government has been slow to act.

“There has been no institutional response at the national level regarding the construction of temporary or permanent shelters,” said Yilson Marmolejo, a Quibdo local.

Meanwhile, the situation in the wider province, much of which is only accessible by river, remains unclear.

“There are places where, even today, the true situation has not yet been fully understood,” said Sanz.

Economic and political fallout

The earthquake has also unleashed vast economic destruction in Colombia.

Sixty-five-year-old Nestor Martinez has owned a bicycle shop in Buenaventura for 25 years. But the earthquake ravaged his store, wrecking its awning, toppling walls, and crushing merchandise.

Martinez has spent the last week cleaning up the debris and conducting an audit of the damage.

He estimates that the cost of the disaster for him is approximately 350 million pesos ($111,000). But, like many Colombians, he does not have business insurance.

“You have to scrape together money wherever you can to get back on your feet,” he said.

Martinez is one of hundreds of thousands who will need support from the government to rebuild their lives.

Donations have poured in from around the world, including a 2 million euro ($2.3m) pledge from the European Union and $15.5m from the US.

President Abelardo de la Espriella, meanwhile, has pledged a reconstruction fund to repair the damage, which his finance minister estimated to be at least $6.4bn.

The president also declared an economic emergency, granting him powers to raise funds through new taxes, but the right-wing statesman has instead opted to increase borrowing, primarily through a $450m credit line from the World Bank.

The earthquake represents the first major test for the leader, who was inaugurated just three days before it struck. He has faced criticism for abstaining from a handover process with the previous government, muddying the disaster response, and for politicising aid by saying he would only accept rescue teams from Israel, El Salvador, and the US – countries ideologically aligned with his government.

Although the country is beginning to turn to the long-term consequences of the disaster, emergency responders continue the arduous labour of digging through the rubble.

“The search for survivors continues; there’s always the possibility of miracles,” said Sergeant Bustamente.

Thousands of people are waiting for aid in the eastern Indonesia region hit by a powerful earthquake that killed dozens of people, as rescuers combed through collapsed buildings in search of people trapped beneath the rubble.

Late on Monday, the death toll was raised from 54 to 68, said Berton SP Panjaitan, an official at Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency, adding that more than 200 ⁠have been injured.

Many residents on Flores island in East Nusa Tenggara province spent Monday searching for loved ones and waiting for aid to arrive in communities still cut off by the magnitude 7.7 earthquake.

During Indonesia’s Independence Day ceremony in the capital, Jakarta, President Prabowo Subianto asked participants to pray for people affected by disasters in East Nusa Tenggara and other parts of the country while leading a nationwide moment of silence honouring the nation’s independence heroes.

More than 1,300 homes were damaged when the quake struck East Nusa Tenggara on Saturday. Nearly 250 were destroyed on Flores alone. Dozens of public buildings, including educational and health facilities as well as government offices, were also affected.

The province’s governor declared a 14-day state of emergency on Sunday.

About 12,800 people were unable to return to their homes by Monday morning and were dispersed among temporary shelters in several towns on Flores, Berton Suar Pelita Panjaitan, spokesman for Indonesia’s BNPB national disaster agency, told the AFP news agency.

Thousands of people on Flores camped outside collapsed homes under tarpaulin tents overnight into Monday, sleeping outside because of the danger of more aftershocks.

“Our houses are no longer liveable because many have collapsed and are full of cracks, so we can’t go inside any more,” Mbay resident Junaidin, 32, told AFP outside his self-made tent that was sleeping about 30 people.

For many residents, the disaster revived painful memories of a powerful earthquake and tsunami that struck Flores in 1992, killing about 2,500 people.

“We’re on our own here,” said Junaidin, who like many Indonesians has one name. He expressed frustration with a perceived lag in the arrival of aid.

“As for help from the government, there hasn’t been any – no tents, no medicine, no food, no drinking water, nothing,” Junaidin said.

The Indonesian air force said it was bringing 13 tonnes of emergency aid airlifted in two Hercules transport planes and a Boeing.

It was also deploying helicopters to bring emergency supplies directly to survivors in isolated communities, the Antara state news agency quoted the commander of El Tari airbase in Kupang on Timor island as saying.

The aid included food, clothes, clean water and emergency medical equipment.

The military has deployed personnel to help with distribution in key hubs.

Rescuers were combing the stricken area for victims despite not receiving any reports about missing people, search and rescue official Fathur Rahman told AFP on Monday.

Indonesia will also build an emergency field hospital in several areas to treat the injured, Deputy Health Minister Benjamin Paulus Octavianus said.

Al Jazeera’s Jessica Washington, reporting from Ruteng in East Nusa Tenggara, said medical staff there had to quickly assemble a tent hospital after the hospital was damaged.

While doctors said they have a sufficient supply of medicine, they weren’t able to get to essential equipment that allows them to perform blood tests and X-rays, which means they are “having to treat patients in very difficult conditions”, Washington said.

Many elderly patients “are being exposed to the intense heat of the daytime” and the “rather cold” evening temperatures, which complicates doctors’ ability to treat them, Washington added.

Indonesia experiences frequent earthquakes due to its location along the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, an arc of intense seismic activity stretching from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.

A magnitude 9.1 tremor in 2004 struck off the coast of Sumatra and triggered a tsunami that killed 220,000 throughout the region, about 170,000 of them in Indonesia.

It was one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history.

A powerful earthquake that struck eastern Indonesia has killed at least 51 people and forced about 5,000 people to evacuate, as rescue teams work to clear roads blocked by landslides and reach survivors still trapped under rubble.

The magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck at 5:58am local time on Saturday (21:58 GMT, Friday), with its epicentre about 68km (42 miles) north-northwest of the city of Ende, on Flores Island, East Nusa Tenggara province, according to the US Geological Survey, which put the depth at 10km (6.2 miles).

The earthquake, followed by some 341 aftershocks, is one of Indonesia’s deadliest in years.

A total of 36 people were seriously injured and 77 more suffered minor injuries, Deputy Health Minister Benjamin Paulus Octavianus told a televised meeting on Sunday.

More than 3,300 people in Sikka regency, one of the hard-hit areas, either fled their homes or were left stranded, taking shelter in a sports arena, according to Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency, BNPB.

“The quake was massive, the shock was so strong, we were resting at home with family,” Nona, a 51-year-old resident of Talibura village, told the Reuters news agency. “There were 13 of us inside the house, and we all ran to save ourselves.”

In the port town of Maumere, some residents camped outside collapsed homes under tarpaulin tents, while others received treatment in a makeshift tent outside a local hospital.

“Almost all of Sikka’s residents didn’t dare stay indoors, so they slept on a porch or a tent outside,” Simon Sabandi, the region’s deputy chief, told news channel KompasTV.

Lieutenant General Suharyanto, the BNPB head, said the earthquake destroyed at least 157 houses and damaged nearly 200 more, forcing about 2,000 villagers in Nagekeo regency, the area closest to the epicentre, into temporary shelters.

He said three helicopters and a rescue vessel had been deployed to support the emergency response in a region where the scattered geography of small islands makes access difficult.

East Nusa Tenggara police chief Rudi Darmoko said the disaster had caused severe damage and building collapses across the province.

Rescue teams have yet to fully reach Nagekeo, where landslides have blocked roads and disrupted communications, said Fathur Rahman, head of the local search and rescue agency in Maumere, adding that a team was attempting to reach the area by ferry.

More than 3,500 military and police personnel have been deployed overall, Cabinet Secretary Teddy Indra Wijaya said. More than 1,300 homes have been damaged, and 20 petrol stations remain shut due to power outages, according to state energy firm Pertamina.

Officials are considering declaring a state of emergency for East Nusa Tenggara, which would unlock further resources and funding.

A tsunami warning issued immediately after the earthquake has since been lifted.

Reporting from Jakarta, Al Jazeera’s Jessica Washington said aftershocks could continue for “several days”, with authorities in the island’s northern areas ordering further evacuations as the true scale of the damage is still “emerging”.

She said several affected areas remain inaccessible to first responders and that local authorities have urged residents to stay away from shorelines and damaged buildings.

The same stretch of coastline was struck by a similarly powerful earthquake in December 1992, when the quake and the tsunami it triggered killed more than 2,500 people on Flores, Indonesia’s geophysics agency said.

Indonesia, a nation of some 290 million people spread across roughly 17,000 islands, sits on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, making it one of the world’s most seismically active countries.

Cali, Colombia – A day after a magnitude 7.4 earthquake shook western Colombia, rescue teams are frantically fighting through the rubble of collapsed buildings to find survivors and recover bodies.

The powerful quake has caused at least 254 deaths nationwide, most of them concentrated in the cities of Pereira and Cali, according to government figures.

“For me, the earthquake felt eternal,” recalled Luis Saenz, a 22-year-old journalism student from Cali.

Saenz was at home enjoying his morning coffee when the quake struck at 7:34am (12:34 GMT) on Monday. He remembers his cat darting under the bed, then chaos as his family fled into the street.

Some 5,000 homes suffered damage, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, while dozens of buildings – many of them residential – collapsed entirely.

In Cali, Colombia’s third-largest city, at least 95 people died, and 45 structures have fully or partially collapsed, according to local government statistics.

“I never thought I would see my city like this,” resident Maria Isabel Cumbal said between sobs, as she watched rescue efforts unfold at the Vanessa Building in the south of the city.

The seven-storey residential apartment block was reduced to wreckage in Monday’s earthquake.

Rescuers now wield hammers, shovels and heavy machinery in an attempt to pierce through thick slabs of concrete and rescue the estimated 20 people trapped underneath.

On and around the collapsed residence, hundreds of volunteers help to clear the rubble by forming a human chain to pass buckets from atop the mound of debris down to dump trucks.

Every so often, a rescuer will hold up a fist to call for silence, so that emergency responders can listen for signs of life.

Search and rescue teams are racing against time across western Colombia after a powerful earthquake killed at least 132 people and left thousands missing, authorities say.

The magnitude 7.4 quake struck on Monday, rattling Cali, Quibdo, Pereira and dozens of other cities and towns. About 1,600 buildings have been reported damaged or collapsed, with soldiers, emergency crews and residents working side by side, passing chunks of concrete by hand as they search for survivors under the rubble.

Families are posting details of missing relatives on citizen-run websites; by Monday night more than 2,700 people had been reported missing. In El Cairo, near the epicentre in San Jose del Palmar, local officials say 80 percent of the town, home to about 7,000 people, has been damaged. Many of its traditional houses, made of sticks and mud, crumpled in the tremors.

President Abelardo de la Espriella, facing his first major crisis since taking office on Friday, has deployed “the entire military and police apparatus”, sending engineers, rescue teams and search dogs into the worst-hit areas. The US has pledged $15.5m in emergency aid, as regional governments also offer support to one of Colombia’s poorest and most isolated regions.