Have the earthquakes in Venezuela somehow “triggered” the one in Colombia?
There's always a possibility that these two big quakes in Venezuela caused the earthquake in Colombia to happen a little earlier, that they helped loosen it up a little bit. But it's hard to say how big that effect is.
If there has been any impact, it is just that it has turned the clock forward a little. This earthquake would have happened anyway, but possibly it made things a little easier.
How common are major earthquakes in the area?
If you just look at Colombia, in 2024 there was an earthquake of magnitude 7.2, in 2012 there was one of 7.3 and in the 1990s there were two earthquakes of over 7. So it's not unusual in this part of South America.
Now this was a somewhat unusually large earthquake in Colombia, but if you go a little further south towards Ecuador, the earthquakes have been even larger.
Why are they common here?
This is due to something called subduction, when the Nazca plate is pulled under the South American plate. It is a relatively rapid movement from a geological point of view: one plate moves several centimeters per year towards the other. If they catch each other - which they often do in these subduction zones - the stresses build up over time until the bedrock can no longer withstand it.
Sweden is far from a plate boundary. Our nearest plate boundary is in the middle of the Atlantic, so we are far from an area where we have these movements that we have in South America.
