Word: nevado
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...double eruption produced none of the spectacular lava displays that characterize such perennially active volcanoes as Hawaii's Kilauea. Instead, the superheated magma within Nevado del Ruiz began to melt the thick blanket of snow and ice that caps the top 2,000 ft. of the peak. Filthy water started to flow down the sides of the mountain. The trickle swiftly turned into a torrent of viscous mud, stones, ashes and debris with a crest of 15 ft. to 50 ft. The liquid avalanche, known as a lahar, was soon hurtling down the steep slopes at speeds...
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...
...reawakening of Nevado del Ruiz was the second cataclysm to strike Latin America in two months. In Mexico, the government of President Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado was still coping painfully with the aftermath of the Sept. 19 earthquake, which left as many as 20,000 dead and, by some estimates, up to 150,000 homeless. Colombia's volcanic catastrophe seemed especially poignant in a country that has been plagued since World War II by a seemingly endless series of man-made travails: civil war, leftist terrorism and battles with a powerful and entrenched drug mafia. Said Colombian President Belisario...
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...
...story). Similar forces were responsible for the Mexico City earthquake as 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...