Word: huayco
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...Andean scenario of disaster, an earthquake jars loose a gigantic slice of glacier and rock from a jagged peak. The massive landslide tumbles into a lake beneath the summit, breaking its natural morainic dam. This, in turn, sets loose what the Peruvian peasants refer to with dread as a huayco-a wall of water, rock and mud that can bury entire villages in the valleys below. In 1797 a huayco killed 41,000 Ecuadorians and Peruvians; in 1939 another took the lives of 40,000 Chileans...
...epicenter of last week's earthquake was located in the Pacific 42 miles west of Chimbote. But most deaths were caused by a huayco that emanated from the northern peak of the twin-pronged Huascaran in a spur of the Andes called the Cordillera Blanca, the highest mountain range in the Western Hemisphere. Apparently, a huge chunk of the mountain fell into chill Lake Yangwnuco and sent an immense slide thundering toward Yungay...
Over a battery-powered radio, a journalist named Lamberto Guzman sent a horrifying report from Yungay: "Out of 41,000 only 3,000 have survived-those of us who reached the higher areas before the huayco hit us. We had been terrified by the quake, and most of us were praying in the streets amid the wreckage of our city when we heard the infernal thunder of the huayco coming down from Huascarán. For God's sake, send us help. We have no medicine, no food. We have sent some men to one of the lakes...
...their way by foot toward the coast. Some were already looking ahead. "We will have to rebuild it again," said a native of the village of Ranrahirca, which was destroyed by a lesser earthquake in 1962 and rebuilt with government aid. "But maybe not in the same place. Every huayco that drops into our valley from the Cordillera Blanca passes through our village...
Above the town, a 60-year-old widow named Zoila Cristina Angel watched the huayco's passage. "I saw it sweep by like a river, carrying away one farmer after another. Voices called 'Run! Run!' but I could not run. I could not move. I could not speak. I just looked at that awful thing that came rushing at us like the end of the world.'' Luckily it passed...
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