A Bermudian physician and pastor has a new appreciation for life after a deadly earthquake in Colombia.

Stanley James travelled to the South American country last week to work with the Christian missionary group It Is Written and establish a clinic in Ibague.

Dr James, founder and chief medical director at Premier Health & Wellness Centre, said his hotel room began to shake at about 6.30am on Monday, August 10.

He explained: “I found myself trying to decide if I should go to the lobby from the ninth floor down or should I stand just the doorway? I was certain that the building would fall.”

At least 240 people were killed and almost 4,000 injured in the 7.4-magnitude earthquake, which struck near San José del Palmar, almost 83 miles from Ibague, where Dr James was based.

He said the earthquake probably lasted less than a minute, but it felt like an hour.

He reflected: “You don’t know when the aftershock is coming, so the post-earthquake anxiety and frustration really became more and more unsettling.”

While Dr James experienced small earthquakes while studying in California, he said none of them compare to the one in Colombia.

He explained: “I heard the building cracking and there was nothing I could do, I felt like I was at the hands of an angry God.”

Dr James said he and others were quite sick for days after the earthquake and that he developed a fever of 103.

Dr James is also the assistant pastor at the Hamilton Seventh Day Adventist Church and said the ordeal reinforced for him how fragile life is.

He said: “There are people that died and I could have been one of those people.

“We live in a secular culture, increasingly so, and we need to return to some fundamental principles of what are you here for and are you living up to your purpose, because life is fleeting, that was probably the biggest thing for me.”

Dr James is returning to Bermuda tomorrow and hopes to work with the Seventh Day Adventist Church and It Is Written so that Bermudians can assist those affected by the earthquake.

He said: “I’m going to be in my office next week, preparing my return to Colombia and plan a re-engagement.”