Word: lagunilla
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Some 30 miles from Nevado del Ruiz, in the Lagunilla River canyon, lay Armero. A thriving agricultural center of whitewashed, tile-roofed homes and pastel colonial churches, the town had taken little part in the more turbulent eras of modern Colombian history. The region's wealth is based on cotton and rice farming. The surrounding Lagunilla River canyon contains some of the country's finest agricultural land...
...Ruiz's last eruption. On Feb. 19, 1845, according to Colombian Historian Rafael Gómez Picón, "subterranean sounds emanated from the upper part of the ... river on the slopes of the snowcapped volcano . . . accompanied by a series of slight quakes. Suddenly, out of the canyon wherein the Lagunilla River flows, an enormous and strange torrent of thick mud became dislodged at tremendous velocity. It dragged with it great blocks of snow, debris, trees and sand." According to Gómez's chronicle, the mudslide destroyed the town of Ambalema some 20 miles southeast of Armero, killing 1,000 people...
...avalanche poured down on Armero, it gained additional ferocity from several sources. Three days of torrential rains had greatly swollen the Lagunilla River, which was already choked with mudslides from the volcano's tentative stirrings in September. At that time geologists from the surrounding federal department of Tolima had expressed concern about the dangers from the dammed-up river. At first the departmental governor, Eduardo Alzate García, said that "there are no immediate risks." Two days later he changed his mind. The geologists declared the region at the base of the volcano a local emergency area, and Alzate planned...
...first word to the outside world came from Armero's mayor, Ramón Antonio Rodríguez, 34. A ham operator, he was on the radio to a fellow ham in Ibagué, 60 miles to the south, when Nevado del Ruiz erupted, scattering rock and ashes across the Lagunilla Canyon. The mayor was calmly describing the event when suddenly he shouted, "Wait a minute. I think the town is getting flooded." Those words were his last...
...certainly not finished its activity. Actually, the worst may be yet to come." On Oct. 22, the Italians submitted a report to the Colombian government warning that an "extremely dangerous" eruption could be expected at any time. They suggested the establishment of a civil defense system in the Lagunilla River valley area, so that any early indications of trouble would trigger widespread and effective warnings to evacuate...