For a quake that started in one of Colombia’s poorest and most remote provinces, the damage has reached remarkably far. Chocó itself is Colombia’s poorest department, where roads are scarce, and much of the region is only reachable by boat or plane. Why a deep quake caused this much damageHere’s the part that’s confused a lot of people, including some seismologists at first. Colombia’s quake, by contrast, was a single deeper event, which is part of why casualties, as devastating as they are, haven’t approached Venezuela’s scale. Chocó, a region long overlooked even by its own government, is suddenly the center of the country’s attention, for the worst possible reason.