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The Delfín brothers had only just begun adjusting to life with their father in a working-class neighborhood on the northeastern outskirts of Cali when the ground shook violently on August 10 during Colombia’s strongest earthquake this century. Deivi who had been sleeping at first mistook the initial movement for a dream but soon ran downstairs with Winder to clutch a metal gate until the tremors ceased they told the BBC. Their father Deivid who was out on the street raced home after the shaking began only to learn from a neighbor that the boys had left the house and eventually found them near the barbershop where he works.
Three months earlier the pair had been heading home from a beach trip along Venezuela’s Caribbean coast when twin shallow earthquakes measuring 7.2 and 7.5 struck just 39 seconds apart collapsing their 12-story apartment building in the hardest-hit La Guaira state according to a BBC report on their experience. The disaster claimed the lives of their mother Yusmani their grandmother Carmen and their 10-year-old brother Moissés prompting the teenagers to join rescue crews despite going days without food or shelter while their father who had been working in Colombia searched for them. Deivi recalled to the BBC that by then he no longer felt like a child as the brothers squeezed through narrow rubble gaps with handheld lights to direct heavier equipment after unearthing familiar items including a floral skirt and their mother’s Bible.
Venezuelan authorities reported in August that the June 24 quakes had killed more than 6,300 people injured around 73,300 and left tens of thousands missing with the US Geological Survey confirming the events as a destructive doublet centered near Yumare. The pair’s ordeal unfolded against a backdrop of prior seismic activity including a 2025 doublet in Zulia state that caused at least one death and over 100 injuries according to local tallies. Colombian search-and-rescue teams were among those who deployed personnel equipment and dogs to support operations in Venezuela in the disaster’s immediate wake as noted in regional coverage.
Colombia now hosts more than 2.8 million Venezuelans the largest share of that country’s migrants abroad with figures from Migracion Colombia showing that 96 percent intend to stay permanently after years of economic and political pressures at home. The Delfín family’s move to join Deivid in Cali mirrors patterns seen among many who have crossed the border seeking stability only to encounter fresh risks in a seismically active region. This latest quake prompted Colombia to declare a national disaster with authorities scrambling to assess widespread damage in areas including Cali.
Rescuers in Colombia mobilized heavy machinery and specialists from Bogota far more rapidly than in the Venezuelan case where recovery faced greater logistical hurdles an Associated Press comparison of the neighboring responses found. The August 10 Colombian event which registered 7.4 in magnitude has so far claimed at least 169 lives with additional casualties and missing persons reported across several provinces according to official updates. Venezuelan government data had similarly revised its own toll upward in the weeks following the initial June shocks as debris clearance continued.
Winder told the BBC that his world came crashing down upon discovering the rubble that entombed his family while Deivi said the earthquake is haunting him even after they reassured their father by saying they had been through this before. The family laid their relatives to rest and now hopes to focus on work and study in Colombia in a way that would make their mother proud. Humanitarian groups including the Red Cross and World Vision have extended aid efforts to thousands of victims from both disasters providing relief that spans the shared border region.
