Arabic version: زوجان من سيدني يفقدان منزلهما في كالي بعد الزلزال

According to ABC News, Sydney couple Ana Maria Chaves and Christian Bitancurt have been forced from their Cali apartment after a magnitude-7.4 earthquake struck Colombia’s west on August 10. The pair had moved to the Colombian city just over a year earlier and had settled into life in the country’s salsa capital.

When the earthquake hit, the couple took shelter beneath their dining table with Ms Chaves’s elderly mother. Their German shepherd could not fit under the table. A wall in the third-floor apartment fell on them while they sheltered. “The sound of the building where you live just falling to bits is terrifying,” Mr Bitancurt said. After the shaking stopped, they went outside to find people crying, desperate and shocked, with no communication.

Their high-rise apartment has been deemed too unstable to live in. Ms Chaves and Mr Bitancurt returned only briefly to collect essentials including clothes and medications, before moving temporarily into the home of Ms Chaves’s step-mother. “We have to start from scratch, we had already set up our home here and we’re looking at having to start from zero,” Ms Chaves said. She said damaged buildings still make walking through Cali dangerous as recovery efforts continue.

In Sydney, members of the Colombian community gathered at a restaurant in Ashfield for a fundraising event featuring traditional food, music, a raffle, DJ and performances. Organiser Daniela Valencia said her sister had lost all her possessions. Funds from the event were being donated to the Red Cross. Nearly 11,000 people born in Colombia live in Sydney. The couple also found comfort in the response in Cali, where they were turned away from volunteering at a collapsed building because there were already too many volunteers.