Earthquake Reflections: Plastic Bag Factory

Now that things have calmed and relief fatigue has set in — with the influencers (much more on them at a later date) back to modeling useless lifestyle products — I am putting together, in no particular order, a few personal experiences that followed the August 10, 2026, event.

The Corosito area of Pereira was typical of many parts of the city: numerous piles of rubble where houses or apartments used to stand, and even more buildings with yellow tape around them — earmarked as unfit for habitation and listed for future demolition.

The local square had been converted into a makeshift, unofficial refugee camp, complete with medical assistance from overseas and local foundations. Angel was my local contact there. He himself was living under plastic after his own home, not 200 meters distant, disappeared in the earthquake, and he hobbled around on a knee injured during the disaster.

As I joined him distributing breakfast (coffee and cookies) around the local neighborhood, we came across an enormous pile of rubble with many people scrambling over the shattered concrete. Also perched atop the rubble were two pieces of heavy machinery, scraping away at the bricks and twisted metal. Who were these men working so dangerously in the holes the diggers created?

Police had been positioned across much of Pereira to prevent the looting of collapsed buildings, but that wasn’t the case here.

It turned out that this had recently been a six-story plastic bag factory equipped with five machines worth $20,000 USD each. Now unrecognizable, the machines were being dragged out one by one, worth only their scrap value.

The subject of insurance was raised; however, the answer was right in front of me. Young men were taking the risk of burrowing under the rubble, within inches of the huge digger buckets, simply to drag out the crushed machinery and as many plastic bags as they could find. This had been going on for hours and would continue long after I had handed over the coffee and cookies.

This is a barrio that will live long in the memory, and I look forward to taking up Angel’s invitation to return in a better moment. They are beautiful, disenfranchised people who represent the very best of Colombia.

“They are beautiful, disenfranchised people who represent the very best of Colombia.”

— Rupert Stebbings

All photographs below were taken by Rupert Stebbings in Pereira.

Headline photo: An excavator clears rubble as volunteers search the wreckage of the collapsed plastic bag factory in Pereira. (Photo: Rupert Stebbings / Finance Colombia)