Word: ashe
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...First came a reddish illumination that shot up to about 26,000 ft.," the pilot recalled. "Then came a shower of ash that covered us and left me without visibility. The cockpit filled with smoke and heat and the smell of sulfur." The blast charred the nose of the DC-8 and turned the aircraft's windows white. Flying only on instruments, Cervero diverted the plane to the city of Cali, 20 minutes from Bogotá. Making his final approach, the pilot said, he had to push open one of the cockpit's side windows in order to catch a glimpse...
...flying 7,000 ft. above a 17,716-ft.-high, long-dormant volcano known as Nevado del Ruiz at the exact moment when it came thunderously alive. Within hours, that rebirth had left upwards of 20,000 people dead or missing in a steaming, mile-wide avalanche of gray ash and mud. Thousands more were injured, orphaned and homeless. The Colombian town of Armero (pop. about 22,500) had virtually disappeared. At week's end a huge cloud of ash, rising as high as 45,000 ft., hung dramatically over the area. The pall obscured the sun and caused...
Tragically, it appeared that the signs leading up to the Nevado del Ruiz eruption had been closely monitored. The volcano began to send up plumes of smoke more than a year ago. On two occasions last September, the mountain spat out showers of rock and ash, eventually causing authorities to issue warnings to the surrounding population while quietly preparing contingency plans to avoid a calamity. Maps plotting the likely course of last week's disaster had been completed only four or five weeks ago. But the next steps had not been taken. Said Darrell Herd, deputy chief of the Reston...
...well as the tremors that perennially shake California. But the eruption also bore an eerie similarity to the 1980 detonation of Washington State's Mount St. Helens, which left an estimated 65 people dead and missing. The initial Nevado del Ruiz blast sent steam and millions of tons of ash into the Andean air, but the debris was followed by almost no lava. About 90 minutes after the initial detonation, there was a second. It was so forceful that it shook the air in Cali, 150 miles to the southwest. Said a civil defense worker in that city: "At first...
...treacherous as quicksand. Some exhausted survivors lay on the surface of the mud in shallows, or staggered along in shock on drier ground. Many of the living were naked or only partly clothed; their garments had been torn from them by the swift-moving lahar. All were encrusted with ash-colored goo that quickly hardened under the next morning's sun into a gritty carapace. Many of the survivors had suffered serious injuries. A sepulchral silence reigned over the devastated town...