The decision that kept foreign rescue teams out of Colombia in the first days after the August 10 earthquake did not originate with the government that has spent the past week defending it. It originated with Javier Pava Sánchez, the acting director of the country’s disaster-risk agency, an appointee of former President Gustavo Petro who was still holding the post four days into Abelardo de la Espriella’s administration, and it is set out over two pages under his own digital signature.

The letter, reviewed by Finance Colombia and filed under radicado (case reference) UNGRD 2026EE14740, tells Foreign Minister Omar Bula Escobar that Colombia’s own accredited capacity is sufficient and that “at this stage of the emergency, it is not necessary to request or activate the deployment of specialized international search-and-rescue teams (USAR).” The document’s embedded digital signature records a signing time of 1:45:08 p.m. on Tuesday, August 11. Pava has since said publicly that it went out at 1:20 p.m.

What the Letter Says

The earthquake struck at 7:34 a.m. on Monday, August 10, with a magnitude of 7.4 and an epicenter in the municipality of San José del Palmar, in the department of Chocó, according to the Servicio Geológico Colombiano (Colombian Geological Survey, or SGC), as reported by Pulzo. De la Espriella had been sworn in the previous Friday and had named little more than his cabinet and a handful of front-line officials; the rest of the state was still staffed by Petro appointees or by lower-ranked officials serving on an interim basis, Madrid’s El País reported in the August 12 interview in which Pava gave his account.

Addressed to Bula at the Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) and signed by Pava as acting director general of the Unidad Nacional para la Gestión del Riesgo de Desastres (National Unit for Disaster Risk Management, or UNGRD), the letter states that the country has more than 25 groups with search-and-rescue capabilities and that Chocó, Valle del Cauca and Risaralda had been prioritized. The figure is broader than the 23 UNGRD-accredited USAR teams that Pava, El Tiempo and La Silla Vacía all cite; the letter counts groups with search-and-rescue capability rather than accredited USAR units. Its finding is conditional: should the emergency outgrow national capacity, Colombia would request support, though only from teams holding a valid classification from INSARAG, the United Nations’ International Search and Rescue Advisory Group. It thanks the international community for its offers. No country is named in it.

Interior Minister Rodrigo Lara, of the Ministerio del Interior (Interior Ministry), has described that document as the trigger under Colombian procedure. He set out the mechanism on Blu Radio on August 14. “Requesting international rescuers is not something the foreign minister does motu proprio; it is not the foreign minister’s initiative. The foreign minister is the vehicle for doing it,” he told Néstor Morales. The determination is made by the Puesto de Mando Unificado (Unified Command Post), the interagency body the UNGRD directs. “If the man at the UNGRD, who was Pava, tells the foreign minister no, then the foreign minister cannot go and request any international assistance on his own initiative. That is to say, the initiative belongs to the director of the UNGRD.” Madrid’s El País reported the same sequence from the other direction: once Pava had specified what was needed, the Foreign Ministry went to multilateral bodies and individual governments and asked for precisely that.

Four Offers, and How Pava Weighed Them

Pava told Madrid’s El País by telephone that Bula had informed him before he wrote the letter of four countries offering rescue personnel: El Salvador, Peru, Israel and the United States. His own accounts differ on when that conversation happened: he told Infobae that he met Bula at around 2 p.m. to review the offers, which would place the meeting after the letter was signed. “In Colombia we have an enormous capacity of rescue teams, we have 23 USAR groups, so I looked carefully at what they offered us,” he said. Two he rejected on certification grounds: “In the case of El Salvador, they were not certified teams, they did not have experience in these types of situations. I also told the foreign minister that Peru’s are not certified either.”

His reasoning on the other two was different. “I told him, ‘Ugh, it seems complicated to me,’ because those have a political strategy,” he said of the Israeli and US offers — the director, Madrid’s El País noted, comes from the left. He qualified it in the same breath: “Of course it is good to have help from whoever, no matter where it comes from, but you have to see what we need most and what we already have capacity covered in. Things may change in the coming days, but at that moment we had capacity covered in rescuers.” He then chose between them. “Between Israel and the United States, I prefer the United States. But not the rescuers, because we have a good team here. It seemed better to me that they send their disaster coordination experts, who have very good technology for organizing satellite information in real time.”

To Blu Radio on August 12 and to the news agency Colprensa three days later, he set out the same four decisions in technical terms, without repeating the political characterization. “There was the offer from El Salvador, from Peru, in which, let’s say, their capacity is, on the one hand, they are not certified under INSARAG rules, and on the other hand, they are medium USAR teams, an area in which we have capacity,” he told Blu Radio. On Israel: “Israel has the response team and I said: no, that is not the one that is needed at this moment, and we stayed with that first requirement.” On the United States: “It was said that we would indeed need something related to specialized groups for the technological handling of information, and that is what the United States offers.”

The Letters That Followed

Pava’s defense is that the letter was a snapshot and that he accepted foreign help the same afternoon. In a video posted to his social media accounts on August 14 and in the Colprensa interview, he said he sent two more letters that day: one at about 3 p.m. accepting the US offer of technological and coordination support, and one at 5:20 p.m. asking that offers of humanitarian aid be accepted. “That letter was issued that day at one twenty in the afternoon and corresponds to the requirement conditions at that moment,” he said in the video, according to Infobae. “It is so that toward three in the afternoon I send a new letter to the Foreign Ministry accepting the help of the United States for those activities.”

Neither of the two follow-up letters has been released, but their contents have been described consistently. Madrid’s El País reported that in a later document Pava made explicit that three field hospitals and several thousand kits of food, household goods and cookware were required, including pet food. Infobae and Colprensa describe the 5:20 p.m. letter in the same terms — hygiene and food kits, and field hospitals to reinforce care in Chocó and Pereira.

He also framed the first letter as a technical instrument rather than a refusal. “There has at no point been any intention to limit access for those groups that can help and contribute assertively,” he said in the video. “When one speaks of authorizing USAR groups or search-and-rescue groups, one is speaking of specialized groups that have been accredited by the country sending them and that are accepted in Colombia.” He said the “disinformation” around the letter carried a “perverse intention: to justify the arrival of the Israeli Army’s USAR teams in Cali,” according to La Silla Vacía.

The México Question

México’s absence from the rescue effort became a story of its own, and Pava has described it two ways four days apart. To Madrid’s El País, on the night he announced he would resign, he said Bula had not initially wanted to receive support from México, which has a left-leaning government. To Colprensa on August 15, he said he had raised México himself and been told there was nothing on the table. “What I knew on Tuesday was the offer from only those four countries,” he said. “I asked whether there were any from México or from Chile, which we have had good experiences with, and they told me there were no offers. By Wednesday I found out that there were indeed offers from other countries, but by then those were other decisions the foreign minister had made.” Asked whether political interests shaped which aid was received, he told Colprensa: “Indeed, they are political decisions taken by the Foreign Ministry. Conflict was generated because aid from some countries was prioritized over others because they are political allies. I was left with many doubts about the México matter, because the foreign minister did not speak of further offers… I was lost.”

México’s public position on August 11 was that it was waiting on Bogotá. President Claudia Sheinbaum said that day that a humanitarian package and a specialized Mexican earthquake-rescue team were ready to go but that Colombia had to approve the deployment. “We are awaiting the formal request from the Government of Colombia, but we are ready for the moment they tell us we can go and help,” she said, according to El País. Chile’s President José Antonio Kast made a similar offer. Bula has said Colombia works with countries “without any ideological or political consideration,” a remark he made at a news conference on August 12, according to Chile’s Emol, citing AFP.

Three separate Mexican groups have figured in the argument. Sheinbaum said on August 13 — by which point Pava had been out of the job for a day — that Colombia had not approved entry for the Mexican Army’s rescue brigade, and that the obstacle was documentary: “They asked for certification from Colombia. They are certified, but now they are asking for another certification,” she said, adding that the brigade “is ready to leave at any moment,” La Opinión reported. The civilian Brigada de Rescate Topos Tlatelolco separately announced it would not travel, citing Colombia’s protocols for coordinating incoming teams. A third group, the independent Topos Aztecas, was already working in Cali, La Silla Vacía reported, noting that neither Topos brigade is México’s official state rescue capability. Pava’s own comment to Madrid’s El País about the Mexican volunteers already on the ground: “The Mexican topos (moles) seem to have come without authorization, and now they have to formalize their entry in order to operate.” Sheinbaum said Colombia had requested food parcels, water and medicine. La Opinión reported that México began an operation on August 12 contemplating 58.5 tons of aid, carried by Mexican Air Force C-130 aircraft, through August 14.

The Transition That Was Called Off

Pava spent 48 hours running the earthquake response for an administration that regarded him as the previous president’s man, and he has described the relationship in those terms. “They distrusted me, and I distrusted them,” he told Madrid’s El País. “In the meetings I was a fly in the milk, because they understand that I am from Petro’s very close circle of friends, not a second-tier official.”

The institutional gap was real on both sides. De la Espriella had ordered the customary transition process with the outgoing Petro administration suspended on July 7, Infobae reported at the time, and the incoming UNGRD director had not been named when the earthquake hit. The agency had no permanent director general and none of the three subdirectors who run its core areas — risk knowledge, risk reduction and disaster management — according to El País of Cali. “The UNGRD has 130 employees on provisional appointments and more than 1,000 contractors; with that team there were only some, because others ended their contracts with the end of the government,” he said. “What I did not count on was that there was no official from the other government, that there was no replacement in the post, and that I would arrive on Monday and this earthquake would occur.” He said the agency had more than $35 billion COP available for the first hours of response. Pava had himself replaced members of the UNGRD’s management team during his two months in the post, and defended those changes when Blu Radio put the criticism to him: “At no point was any sub-directorate left abandoned; it was taken on by career staff with experience and capacity.”

What the New Director Did Next

geologist David Santiago Tamayo Roldán, De la Espriella’s own pick, was sworn in as UNGRD director on the morning of Wednesday, August 12, and the government’s position changed the same day, on Lara’s account: “As soon as the new UNGRD director, Doctor Tamayo, arrived, the first thing he did in the morning with the foreign minister was to certify that international aid would be received, and international rescuers arrived.”

That Wednesday morning the Foreign Ministry welcomed a team of 22 US experts specialized not in carrying out rescue work but in coordinating those who do — the support Pava had recommended requesting from Washington. Hours later Tamayo announced Colombia would accept international rescue teams to relieve Colombian crews as needed. More than 54 hours had passed since the earthquake, Madrid’s El País reported.

The published country lists have not matched. Emol, citing AFP, reported on August 12 that Tamayo named four countries: the United States, Israel, El Salvador and Ecuador. México’s La Jornada carried the same four. La Silla Vacía reported three — Israel, the United States and El Salvador — and Lara also said three: “Rescuers were requested from three countries because no more are needed.” He went on: “Because we also cannot receive 4,000 rescuers, because receiving them, the 4,000 rescuers, becomes an additional problem for us.”

Tamayo’s own list changed again four days later. Presenting the national balance on the evening of August 15, he said the emergency had not exceeded the country’s response capacity, while noting that Colombia had accepted specialized international support to reinforce operations. He said three UN-accredited groups were in the country — from the United States, Ecuador and Israel, a trio that drops El Salvador from the list La Silla Vacía and Lara had given; warned local officials not to authorize groups not properly certified for search and rescue; and questioned that many such groups arrive requesting large quantities of resources without the capacity to operate autonomously, El País of Cali reported. Four days after Pava’s letter, the certification threshold and the capacity finding were the new government’s position as well.

What the Capacity Numbers Show

Colombia has 23 UNGRD-accredited USAR teams and roughly 1,000 trained rescuers drawn from the Colombian Red Cross, the Defensa Civil Colombiana (Colombian Civil Defense), fire departments, the armed forces and the national police‘s specialized Ponalsar search-and-rescue unit, according to El Tiempo, which interviewed Silvia Ballén, head of the UNGRD’s national search-and-rescue program. Colombia’s USAR COL-1 team obtained its international INSARAG classification in 2018, making the country one of four in the hemisphere with a UN-certified search-and-rescue team, El Tiempo reported; a team at the heavy classification averages 64 personnel and can sustain field work for seven to 10 days.

Lara said the constraint in some regions was demand, not supply. “In Quibdó 160 rescuers were left idle, with their arms crossed, because there was nothing left to search for or rescue,” he said, adding that they could be moved to Pereira, Dosquebradas or Cali but that local officials were reporting sufficient coverage: “Both the governor and the mayor, the mayors of these cities, tell us that there are enough rescuers.” La Silla Vacía reported that from Wednesday night several regions began closing the rescue phase, with Quibdó moving to reconstruction, Buenaventura expected to follow, and towns such as Quimbaya, in Quindío, requiring no rescue operations because there were no missing persons.

The View From Outside

Foreign governments spent August 11 asking whom to talk to. China’s ambassador to Colombia, Zhu Jingyang, asked the government to name an official and an official liaison for coordinating international assistance. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele confirmed publicly that Colombia had declined rescue personnel: “The Government of Colombia has requested humanitarian aid only in the form of supplies to assist the families affected by the earthquake,” he wrote on his social media accounts. “We have been informed that its rescue teams, medical teams and other emergency bodies are deployed and attending to the situation, so that at this moment they do not require personnel support.” El Salvador said it would send two cargo planes with 100 tons of supplies instead; Emol reported the shipment arrived. Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, made a similar request for a clear and organized response to the offers on the table, Madrid’s El País reported. Laerke also confirmed that the United Nations had received no formal request for assistance from Colombia, while saying the UN system stood ready to provide all the support within its reach, according to Infobae.

The United States was the exception. Washington announced $15.5 million USD in aid for emergency shelter, food, protection and damage assessment, and the State Department said it had activated a Disaster Assistance Response Team on Monday that would arrive in Colombia on Tuesday. Colombia issued a diplomatic note on Tuesday requesting specific support from the international community, short of a formal international appeal. UN Secretary-General António Guterres wrote that day that “the United Nations remains in close contact with the Colombian authorities and supports the government-led response, as requested.” Infobae reported that Pacto Histórico (Historic Pact) politicians including former Senator María José Pizarro and Representative Mafe Carrascal were pressing De la Espriella to request UN help. On August 12, Israel’s government said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had ordered an aid delegation dispatched “following a request from Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella,” according to Semana.

Where It Stands

Lara has been summoned to Congress to account for the government’s handling of the emergency. “On Tuesday we were summoned to Congress, we have been summoned, I was summoned to Congress so that we explain this situation,” he said, adding: “Watching how they make politics out of this tragedy — that is scavenger politics, frankly. Let’s drop it now.”

The UNGRD’s latest national balance, with a cutoff of 6:30 p.m. on August 15, records 289 people dead, 3,937 injured, 143 missing and 353 rescued across 15 departments and 448 municipalities, with 117,222 people affected. The death toll was revised down from 294 reported that morning and the missing figure from 320, after the agency cross-checked municipal reports against records held by the Fiscalía General de la Nación (Attorney General’s Office), the Instituto Nacional de Medicina Legal y Ciencias Forenses (National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences) and relief agencies to remove duplicates. Pava has pointed to that volatility in his own defense, telling Colprensa that on the Monday “I had an assessment far below what exists today,” and that at the time of his meeting with Bula the assessment showed the main sites requiring rescue were covered and that what was missing was coordination support and some technological capability.ungrd-carta-a-minexterior.

Full Translation: The UNGRD Letter to Colombia’s Foreign Ministry

The following is Finance Colombia’s translation of the original Spanish-language letter (radicado UNGRD 2026EE14740, dated August 11, 2026, digitally signed at 1:45 p.m.), sent by the UNGRD to Colombia’s Foreign Ministry:

Bogotá D.C.,
Doctor
Omar Bula Escobar
Minister of Foreign Affairs
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Calle 10 No. 5 – 51. Palacio de San Carlos

Subject: Update on national search-and-response capacity in light of the earthquake that occurred in Colombia on August 10, 2026.

Dear Minister:

As part of the response to the emergency caused by the 7.4 Mw-magnitude earthquake recorded on August 10, 2026, with its epicenter in the municipality of San José del Palmar, department of Chocó, the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD) wishes to report on the current status of the response and the capabilities available within national territory.

According to information consolidated by the UNGRD’s National Crisis Room, the coordinating entity for risk management in Colombia, and taking into account that the assessment of damages and needs continues to be updated, different territories have been prioritized, particularly the departments of Chocó, Valle del Cauca and Risaralda, according to the needs identified in each of them.

With regard to search and rescue in collapsed structures, Colombia is carrying out response actions through its specialized national capabilities, with search-and-rescue groups accredited by the Government of Colombia, deployed and coordinated through the National Disaster Risk Management System.

At this hour, the country has more than 25 groups with search-and-rescue capabilities, which are sufficient to meet the operational needs identified in the affected areas. Based on the assessment carried out so far and on the national capabilities available, the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management, through its Search and Rescue Program, considers that, at this stage of the emergency, it is not necessary to request or activate the deployment of specialized international search-and-rescue teams (USAR).

This determination corresponds to the current state of the emergency and is subject to ongoing monitoring of conditions on the ground. Should the emergency evolve, or should the identification of new needs exceed available national capabilities, the Government of Colombia will promptly communicate, through established official channels, its specific requirements for international assistance and, if necessary, may request support solely from international search-and-rescue teams holding the corresponding INSARAG classification.

In this regard, the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management expresses its deep gratitude to the international community for its expressions of solidarity and for the offers of technical, operational and humanitarian support in search and rescue received through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the UNGRD.

Colombia maintains active mechanisms of coordination and information exchange with the international community and, in particular, is reporting on the evolution of the response and available capabilities through the corresponding international coordination mechanisms, including the Virtual OSOCC (Virtual On-Site Operations Coordination Centre) platform, within the framework of United Nations mechanisms for coordinating search-and-rescue operations.

Sincerely,

Javier Pava Sánchez
Director General (Acting)

Prepared by: Laura Manuela Bermúdez Caro, contractor, International Cooperation Group – UNGRD
Reviewed by: Nicolás Fernández de Soto, International Cooperation Liaison to the Director General’s Office – UNGRD
Reviewed by: Antonio José López Reales, Coordinator, International Cooperation Group – UNGRD
Reviewed by: Silvia Carolina Ballén Sánchez, Specialized Professional, Management Sub-Directorate – UNGRD
Reviewed by: Johana Andrea Rangel Franco, Specialized Professional, Management Sub-Directorate – UNGRD

Who Is Javier Pava Sánchez?

Javier Pava Sánchez is a geological engineer, a specialist in risk evaluation and disaster prevention and a master’s graduate in territorial planning and population dynamics, according to El Tiempo. Petro appointed him to lead the UNGRD in 2022, and returned him to the agency as acting director through Decree 0611 of June 16, 2026, after the Procuraduría General de la Nación (Inspector General’s Office) suspended director Carlos Carrillo over alleged improper political activity. Carrillo said the measure surprised him and rejected it, telling reporters, according to Infobae: “At no time did I campaign, I never promoted any candidate nor did I request electoral support for any campaign.”

Pava was still the UNGRD’s acting director when he signed the August 11 letter, announced that night that he would step down, and was replaced by Tamayo on the morning of August 12. He remains acting manager of the Fondo Adaptación (Adaptation Fund), another agency in the sector for which the new government has not named a replacement, Madrid’s El País reported. Two days after leaving the UNGRD, in the video responding to Lara, he said: “I want to state to Colombia that I have acted responsibly in the exercise of my functions and consistently with the government I represent, which is the government of President Petro.”

Above image: Javier Pava Sánchez speaks during a meeting at UNGRD headquarters in Bogotá. (Photo: UNGRD handout)