Members of Ottawa’s Colombian community are checking on loved ones and organizing relief efforts after a powerful 7.4-magnitude earthquake hit the western part of the South American country on Monday morning. The earthquake reduced buildings to rubble and sent people running into the streets. More than 200 people have been killed, thousands remain missing and roughly 1,600 buildings have been damaged or destroyed. For Junita Botero, whose family owns Encanto Cafe in Manotick, the disaster hits close to home. “I was so scared. I started to call my mom and my uncle, and we were trying to reach our family,” she said. Botero says her immediate family in Armenia survived, but they lost their homes. “At least all our family is okay. They don’t have a house anymore, but at least they are okay,” she said. “But I have some friends that cannot find their parents or their families.” The café, created to bring a little bit of Colombia to Ottawa, is now becoming part of the relief effort. Botero says the family plans to begin collecting donations, with the hope of travelling to Colombia this weekend to help deliver supplies. “We are going to start collecting donations as soon as tomorrow or Tuesday,” she said. Encanto Cafe is looking for items including non-perishable food, flashlights, power banks, medical supplies, gloves and masks. The family is also looking for an airline or another partner that can help transport the donations to Colombia. The café is not the only organization mobilizing. The Colombian Canadian Community of Ottawa and Gatineau has launched an online fundraiser to help provide food, shelter and other emergency assistance to those affected. The organization’s president, Marcela Martinez, who is helping with the effort, says her family in Bogotá felt the earthquake despite living about an hour by plane from Cali. “My family, they live in Bogotá and if you take a plane from Cali to Bogotá it takes one hour, and my family felt the earthquake,” she said. “They told me the houses, the buildings were moving, everything was moving and my mother, she’s almost 80, she was very afraid she was traumatized.” Martinez is urging people across the region to contribute whatever they can. “This is a call for all cultures living here in Canada. Even if you can donate $10, trust me, at this moment every dollar is important.” For those organizing relief efforts in Ottawa, the focus now is on collecting what they can and finding a way to get it where it is needed. “It’s going to be a long road because our city and all the cities around are completely destroyed,” Botero said.
