Word: cervero
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...shortly after 9 p.m. Wednesday, and Pilot Manuel Cervero was nearly home. Cervero was flying a DC-8 cargo jet from Miami to the Colombian capital, Bogotá, a sprawling city of 5 million in the Andes. The plane was cruising at 24,000 ft., 110 miles or ten minutes from El Dorado International Airport. Then, without warning, Cervero and his aircraft ran afoul of one of nature's most destructive phenomena...
...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 of the airport's runway lights. He landed safely...
...Cervero did not at first know that he had been 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...
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