Word: nevado
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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...
Many of Armero's residents probably never knew their prosperity was the result of Nevado del 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...
...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...
...hilltop cemetery, or found other spots above the flood crest. Survivors later testified that the first wave of mud to hit the town was ice cold, like the mountain snows that spawned it. As it rolled onward, the mud carried along more and more of the inner fire of Nevado del Ruiz, until finally the cascade was smoking...
...tidal wave rolled on, submerging the neighboring village of Santuario (pop.: about 1,400) and two other small communities. To the west, on the opposite slope of Nevado del Ruiz, a second avalanche broke loose and headed for Chinchiná, a city of about 34,000. Some 200 families fled the area. Chinchiná, six miles from the base of the volcano, escaped major damage, but civil authorities estimate that 1,090 people died in the immediate area...