Days Into Term, Colombia Quake Tests New President

As Indonesia assesses the damage from that massive 7.7 magnitude earthquake, rescue efforts are continuing half a world away in Colombia. They certainly are. Nearly 300 people died in Monday's 7.4 magnitude quake. For an update, let's head to the capital of Bogota, where Mia Dahl is, Bloomberg News, Latin American reporter. Good to have you here, Mia. What can you tell us about the latest in terms of the rescue efforts and where that sits right now? The rescue efforts continue in Western Colombia. So we've already passed the critical 72-hour rescue window, but we hear from rescue teams that they still continue to hear signs of life underneath the rubble. So they continue to search. And we know from a recent earthquake in neighboring Venezuela that it's possible to find people many days after the earthquake strike. So actually there, they found people alive up to 29 days. So we will see rescue efforts continue these days, but they will increasingly then become replaced by recovery and reconstruction efforts. Well, rescue and recovery is, of course, the priority here, Mia. But we also are concerned about the economic impact on Colombia, where we understand that coffee exports have partially resumed. What's the status? That's correct. So initially there was a big shock to coffee exports. Colombia is the world's second biggest coffee grower. So anything that happens to coffee here will really affect world prices. And that happened after Monday's earthquake, primarily because of damage to infrastructure, the roads, the ports that are supposed to transport coffee out of Colombia were damaged. And that created an initial shock. We saw like a spike in futures of Arabica coffee. They had already increased by like 30% since June because of weather conditions related to El Nino. But then we saw like a multiple week high on Wednesday when they came up to $3.2 per pound. Now they're recovering because those infrastructure routes are starting to recover as well. And we are likely to see a normalization of that industry. But there will be very severe impacts to the wider economy. Well, let's talk about that. And I also think about the new leadership, the president who just came in. Mia, you know, often, unfortunately, crisis moments are true tests of leadership. What can you tell us about that front and how that's going so far? So the new president in Colombia really just started the job. He was sworn in as a president on Friday last week. And Monday was his first day on the job. And he came into this massive crisis. He was already facing a number of crisis, a fiscal crisis, a security crisis, a health crisis, an energy crisis. But then this earthquake struck like at 7.30 in the morning and it created a whole new set of crisis for him. He's not an experienced politician. He used to work as a litigation lawyer. He also has a rum brand and is more known for his businesses and lawyer work. But he's now being put to test with this. I find it really fascinating, Mia, when we consider the international response that Colombia did not want the help of certain neighbors. What can you tell us about that? That has created a lot of criticism. So initially, a lot of neighboring countries or countries across Latin America offered help, including Mexico, which has a lot of experience in these rescue missions and have been deployed in over 90 different countries in the world. But the president rejected those offers for rescue teams. He instead said that he would receive rescue teams from Israel, El Salvador or the United States, which are ideological allies, unlike Mexico, which created a lot of speculation and criticism as to whether he was making this like a political gamble for rescue efforts.