Pereira, the 'zombie city' devastated by Colombia's earthquake

Jorge Gonzalez searches with his bare hands for his aunt under the ruins of a four-story building in Pereira, one of the cities hardest hit by the powerful earthquake in Colombia that has left at least 240 dead.

Like hundreds of volunteers and rescuers, he has spent hours clinging to the faintest hope there may be survivors in the rubble, despite the 7.4 magnitude quake that struck this coffee capital on Monday morning.

The 35-year-old works tirelessly on a small mountain of rubble, but it is increasingly unlikely he will find the woman he considers a mother alive.

Amid slabs of wall and masonry, he finds the bathroom "full of blood" on the floor where his aunt, 87-year-old Nubia Bonilla, lived.

"Since yesterday, I got here and I haven't left. Until they give me the body, I'm not leaving this place," Gonzalez tells AFP.

"She was all I had, and she's gone. Now I'm all alone," he adds, tears in his eyes.

All around him, the death toll rises with each passing hour.

By daybreak, residents were returning to their damaged homes to salvage some belongings before they collapsed completely.

Water and some food items were already running short in supermarkets and shops.

Almost all of Pereira was left without electricity, and the cell network is patchy at best.

The streets are littered with glass and chunks of brick.

It is a "zombie city," says 30-year-old resident Juan David Gaitan.

For Jesus Pineros, this earthquake has left him homeless for the second time.

Three years ago, he arrived in Colombia by bus, fleeing the crisis in neighboring Venezuela.

But the house where he lived with his siblings and nephews was reduced to pieces by the quake.

"As migrants, we've already been through some tough things back in our own country, and you never imagine something like this would happen on top of that," said the 28-year-old construction worker.

The family took refuge in a relative's house that remained standing.

Several children sleep on mattresses along the sidewalk in front of the home.

They tried to spend the night inside, but the roof groaned and terrified them.

Hundreds of homes collapsed or are cracked.

On the streets there are cars crushed by fallen walls and hanging power lines. Pineros sees the tragedy as a challenge for the family to rebuild their lives for the second time.

"We're starting from the bottom. We have to get back up again just like everyone else," he says.

Stella Galvis recalls the moments of panic and the dust and how she ran with her child and husband seconds before her four-story building collapsed.

"We've been left with nothing. We lost everything," says the accountant, who lived on the ground floor, in tears.

"We were saved by a miracle," she adds.

Street vendor Maribel Verano, 46, is desperately searching for her missing mother and sister.

Both were in a small hotel that was reduced to rubble in a commercial area of the city.

Her mother, 72-year-old Luz Marina, recently suffered a thrombosis, and her sister Sandra, 38, ended up in a wheelchair because of meningitis.

"I hope to find them in good health," the woman says, unable to hide her sadness.

She is overwhelmed by memories of other nightmare disasters, such as the massive earthquake that shook the same region in 1999 and left nearly 1,200 dead.

And another that she lived through as a child: the 1985 eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz volcano, which wiped out an entire town called Armero and left 25,000 dead.