Last Message to Fiancée Before Death Under Rubble in Colombia
Juan Felipe Giraldo told Natalia Patiño he had arrived and was fine, just hours before the hotel in Pereira collapsed in a 7.4-magnitude earthquake.
Juan Felipe Giraldo told Natalia Patiño he had arrived and was fine, just hours before the hotel in Pereira collapsed in a 7.4-magnitude earthquake.
Juan Felipe Giraldo, father of a two-year-old child, died under the rubble of the Hotel Dibeni in the Colombian city of Pereira following a devastating 7.4-magnitude earthquake that struck western Colombia on August 10, 2026. His body was found on Friday, August 14, and his family identified him by the clothes he wore on the day of his arrival, as reported by the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo.
Giraldo traveled to Pereira by bus on the night from Sunday to Monday to sell eyeglass frames. Upon arrival, he sent his fiancée Natalia Patiño a video message. "He sent me a video telling me he had arrived, that he was fine, that he was tired," Patiño recounted in an interview with the show Séptimo Día, as reported by El Tiempo.
After feeling the earthquake, she immediately tried to contact him. "I wrote to him: 'Good morning, love, how are you? It shook, how are you?' And he didn't reply anything," she said.
At the time of the earthquake, Natalia was in Bogotá, where she was caring for their two-year-old child. As the first images of destruction began to circulate, her concern grew. "When I saw images of buildings already collapsed, I said: 'No, this is very serious,' and I became even more worried," she recalled.
Soon after, Giraldo's employers called her with news she least wanted to hear. "The bosses called me to tell me: 'Natalia, I have to talk to you because it turns out the hotel where he was staying completely collapsed,'" she recounted.
His parents, including his father Hernán Giraldo, immediately traveled to Pereira and spent four days at the disaster site, monitoring the rubble removal efforts. Hope lasted until Friday, August 14, when rescue teams found the young man's body. Due to the severity of the collapse, he was identified solely by his clothing.
The couple was supposed to get married on the Sunday following the earthquake. Instead of a wedding, the family faced a loss that, according to El Tiempo, plunged the capital of the Risaralda department into mourning.
According to a report by the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD) released on August 18, the earthquake claimed 304 lives in western Colombia, injured 4,548 people, left 426 missing, and rescued 356. A total of 29,554 homes were destroyed, and 134,342 buildings were damaged.
However, El Tiempo cites a different death toll nationwide: 404 people. Sources thus disagree on the total number of victims, with the Russian state agency TASS reporting the UNGRD figure of 304 dead, while the Colombian newspaper reports 404.
The epicenter of the earthquake was near the town of San José del Palmar in the Chocó department, in western Colombia.
