Dear NZSEE Members,
Following the recent earthquake in Colombia earlier today, the NZSEE Learning from Earthquakes (LFE) Committee is seeking 4–6 volunteers to join our Virtual Earthquake Reconnaissance Team (VERT) to gather insights and lessons from these events and inform future decisions on a potential mission deployment.
On 10 August 2026, a 7.4 Mw magnitude earthquake struck San José del Palmar, Colombia. As information continues to emerge over the coming days, there is significant value in collecting and organising publicly available observations to support engineering learning and future resilience efforts.
The aim of this initiative is to assemble a small team of NZSEE members that will help identify, verify and catalogue publicly available information, including news reports, social media posts, photographs, videos, engineering observations and functionality impacts. Tasks may also include translating non-English sources, geolocating damage, classifying structural damage, contributing information to a shared database, and connecting our LFE team with other organisations who are following this event.
The commitment is expected to be a minimum of six hours spread over three/four days. A preliminary online meeting is planned for tomorrow Wednesday, 12 August 2026 at 8am to discuss the event, allocate tasks, and establish a coordinated approach.
The findings will be summarised into a brief reconnaissance report that will be shared with the NZSEE membership, helping capture important lessons for New Zealand engineering practice and future earthquake reconnaissance.
If you are interested in participating, please fill out the form below. Registration will close today, Tuesday 11 August 2026, at 4pm. Meeting details and further information will be provided only to shortlisted volunteers. Filling out the form does not guarantee participation
LFE VERT Volunteer Registration form – Colombia
We also acknowledge the valuable work that previous volunteers have contributed to the Venezuela and Japan virtual reconnaissance missions. The work they contributed to these reports has been acknowledged and has added significant value to the reconnaissance missions. As the LfE team continues to build capacity and improve the reconnaissance process, events continue to happen. We apologise if some members have missed the opportunity to participate in previous missions. Our intention is to provide opportunities for everyone who may be interested to get involved. However, due to time constraints and the nature of these events, we may not always be able to accommodate everyone. Please reach out if you have any questions or would like to discuss opportunities to participate in future missions.
We look forward to working with you on this new NZSEE Learning from Earthquakes initiative.
Kind regards,
NZSEE Learning from Earthquakes Committee
