M5.0 Earthquake near Tarazá, Colombia — 26 December 2024

Moderate earthquakes can damage poorly built or unreinforced structures near the epicentre, while well-engineered buildings typically escape serious harm. Shaking is often strong enough to wake sleeping residents over a wide area.

A magnitude 5.0 earthquake radiates roughly 477 tons of TNT equivalent in seismic energy.

The USGS assigns this earthquake a significance score of 387, which is below the USGS threshold of more than 600 for its significant-earthquake list. The ranking combines magnitude with available Did You Feel It responses and PAGER alert level; it is not a direct measurement of damage.

That is about 19:51 local solar time at the epicentre, in the evening.

This event was shallower than 59% of the 90 earthquakes recorded in Colombia in our catalogue and stronger than 87% of them.

The epicentre was located at 7.4255, -75.3359 — 15 km north-northeast of Valdivia. The closest other recorded event was a magnitude 4.5 earthquake 60 km east-northeast of here on 19 January 2025.

The nearest other settlements in our records are El Bagre (60 km east-northeast), Uramita (106 km west-southwest), San Rafael (134 km south-southeast) and Abriaquí (139 km southwest).

At 70 km this was an intermediate-depth earthquake. Energy from events at this depth spreads out before it reaches the surface, which usually means weaker shaking near the epicentre than a shallow quake of the same magnitude, but shaking felt across a wider area.

This catalogue does not ingest eyewitness responses, so it cannot confirm where this earthquake was felt. Based on magnitude alone, an event this size can be felt widely and may cause minor local damage. Its intermediate depth normally reduces peak shaking near the epicentre compared with a shallow event of the same magnitude.

The USGS record does not carry a link to NOAA tsunami information. That field is not an all-clear and does not state whether a tsunami occurred. In this case, a damaging tsunami would be less likely because at M5.0 it falls below the magnitude 6.5 threshold that generally applies before a submarine earthquake displaces enough water to generate a damaging tsunami; it occurred inland rather than beneath the sea floor. For an active coastal alert, use tsunami.gov or your local warning authority.

No further earthquakes have been recorded within about 150 km of the epicentre in the seven days after this event.

9 earthquakes of magnitude 4 or above have been logged within roughly 200 km of this epicentre in our catalogue. The strongest was a magnitude 5.4 event near Uramita on 14 September 2025. This M5.0 event released about 4.0 times less energy than that event.

No other earthquakes have been recorded within 100 km of this epicentre in the past year, which makes this a genuinely isolated event.

This earthquake is part of the December 2024 worldwide record, and of earthquakes in Colombia during December 2024. Browse the full monthly archive to compare periods.