Word: armero
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...extent of the eruption, you really tend to overreact when you don't need to. We can also give practical information - telling people about ash flow or when a mudflow is coming down a river valley - that has really high stakes. In 1985, an entire town in Colombia, Armero, was obliterated and [about] 23,000 people were buried alive when a relatively small eruption melted snow and ice on a volcano and sent it rushing down this river valley. Scientists knew the eruption had occurred, but the communications process broke down. People in bed or watching a soccer game were...
...Armero had become a ghostly wasteland of gray mud pockmarked with the jutting remains of houses, automobiles, trees and sometimes dead bodies. The government planned to have the Roman Catholic Church declare the area a "holy ground," meaning that more than 20,000 corpses would probably remain forever entombed under the hardening mass of volcanic ash, sand and clay. Health Minister Rafael de Zubiria expressed concern over potential outbreaks of disease, though he emphasized that there was no sign of epidemics...
More than 8,000 residents of Armero and surrounding towns are believed to have survived the disaster. Last week 4,500 of them were scattered in 23 hospitals and clinics in four provinces. Thousands more have trekked off across the countryside in search of lost relatives, aided by lists and photographs of survivors broadcast or published by the government. Already, most of the hundreds of children left parentless by the disaster have been claimed by relatives. Altogether, some 8,000 children under 16 died in the mudslides...
...widespread feeling that the bureaucracy in Bogotá had failed when the crisis was at its worst. Critics of the relief effort charge that three days after the eruption the government had still failed to organize a plan of action. By that time, of course, hundreds of people alive in Armero immediately after the mudslides had perished. Nonetheless, U.S. Ambassador Charles A. Gillespie defended the Colombian government, saying that confusion and disorganization "are normal in disaster situations...
...Palace of Justice, where 100 people, including eleven Supreme Court justices, died during a furious gun battle between troops and M-19 guerrillas. "The army lost no time in blowing up the Justice Palace," says a Bogotá lawyer bitterly, "but they couldn't get a water pump to Armero to save the life of a little girl." Indeed, 13-year-old Omaira Sanchez had become a national hero for surviving for 60 hours while up to her neck in muddy water. A privately donated pump arrived shortly after the girl's heart finally gave...