Cali, Colombia – A day after a magnitude 7.4 earthquake shook western Colombia, rescue teams are frantically fighting through the rubble of collapsed buildings to find survivors and recover bodies.

The powerful quake has caused at least 254 deaths nationwide, most of them concentrated in the cities of Pereira and Cali, according to government figures.

“For me, the earthquake felt eternal,” recalled Luis Saenz, a 22-year-old journalism student from Cali.

Saenz was at home enjoying his morning coffee when the quake struck at 7:34am (12:34 GMT) on Monday. He remembers his cat darting under the bed, then chaos as his family fled into the street.

Some 5,000 homes suffered damage, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, while dozens of buildings – many of them residential – collapsed entirely.

In Cali, Colombia’s third-largest city, at least 95 people died, and 45 structures have fully or partially collapsed, according to local government statistics.

“I never thought I would see my city like this,” resident Maria Isabel Cumbal said between sobs, as she watched rescue efforts unfold at the Vanessa Building in the south of the city.

The seven-storey residential apartment block was reduced to wreckage in Monday’s earthquake.

Rescuers now wield hammers, shovels and heavy machinery in an attempt to pierce through thick slabs of concrete and rescue the estimated 20 people trapped underneath.

On and around the collapsed residence, hundreds of volunteers help to clear the rubble by forming a human chain to pass buckets from atop the mound of debris down to dump trucks.

Every so often, a rescuer will hold up a fist to call for silence, so that emergency responders can listen for signs of life.