Colombia's Mortal Agony
By George Russell
It was 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, Bogota, 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.
"First came a reddish illumination that shot up to about 26,000 ft.," the 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 Bogota. 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 the area. The pall obscured the sun and caused the normal afternoon temperature of 77DEG F to drop to about 55DEG F. As rescuers hunted frantically amid the soupy devastation for mud-covered survivors, it was soon clear that Nevado del Ruiz would rate as one of the deadliest volcanic eruptions in all of recorded history, roughly equivalent to the A.D. 79 explosion of Mount Vesuvius, which destroyed the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum.
The 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 Betancur Cuartas as he personally directed rescue operations last week: "Time and time again we are visited by tragedy. But with the help of God we will overcome."
The eruption came at a particularly bad time for Betancur. In the days before the disaster, he had been under heavy political attack for his Nov. 6 decision to send army troops against M-19 guerrillas who had taken over Bogota's Palace of Justice. The spectacular and bloody assault horrified television viewers around the world and left nearly 100 dead, including eleven Colombian Supreme Court Justices.
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, Va.-based Office of Earthquakes, Volcanos and Engineering at the U.S. Geological Survey: "The volcano erupted too soon."
The international community was quick to respond to Colombia's agony. As President Reagan sent Betancur a message expressing his sympathy, the U.S. dispatched a dozen CH-47 Chinook and Black Hawk helicopters from Panama to take part in rescue operations. Public and private U.S. disaster relief swelled toward $1 million. In Geneva, the League of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies reported that twelve countries had contributed $1,250,000 worth of tents, generators, food, blankets and other essentials.
The explosion in the snowy, rugged Andean peak came from a buildup of molten rock and trapped gases that was ultimately caused by the movement of two of the earth's huge tectonic plates (see following 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 to the southwest. Said a civil defense worker in that city: "At first I thought it might be a terrorist bombing in our neighborhood."
The 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 of up to 30 m.p.h. With irresistible force, it roared down the flanks of Nevado del Ruiz in the most natural of channels: the beds of the Guali, Azufrado and Lagunilla rivers, which flow east and south from the base of the volcano (see map).
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 Gomez Picon, "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 Gomez's chronicle, the mudslide destroyed the town of Ambalema some 20 miles southeast of Armero, killing 1,000 people. The 1845 eruption also deposited some 250 million tons of lime on the plains surrounding Armero. The debris eventually decomposed into rich topsoil up to 25 ft. thick.
The region's good life disappeared in a few minutes on Wednesday night. Later, survivors described the wall of destruction that fell on their town in almost the same words used by Historian Gomez. "First there were earth tremors," remembered Rosa Maria Henao, 39, the mother of two, as she lay in the 30-bed hospital of Mariquita, a small town about 15 miles north of Armero. "The air suddenly seemed heavy. It smelled of sulfur. Then there was a horrible rumbling that seemed to come from deep inside the earth."
As the 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 Garcia, 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 to have the water buildup drained through an escape canal. Work on that project had not begun when death thundered down the mountainside.
The first word to the outside world came from Armero's mayor, Ramon Antonio Rodriguez, 34. A ham operator, he was on the radio to a fellow ham in Ibague, 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.
The mudslide that entombed Rodriguez cut through Armero like a liquid scythe. Henao later recollected that the wave "rolled into town with a moaning sound, like some sort of monster." Luckily, her home was on a hill. "Houses below us started cracking under the advance of the river of mud," she recalled. She grabbed her children and climbed to the roof of her home. As they watched, more than 80% of the roughly 4,200 buildings in Armero simply vanished into the torrents of slime. Said she: "It seemed like the end of the world."
Those with the opportunity and the presence of mind, like Henao, rushed desperately onto rooftops, or clambered into the branches of nearby trees. Some ran for the city's highest ground, its 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 hot.
German Acosta, 31, was sleeping at home with his father and four brothers when the avalanche struck, blanketing all five with mud. Acosta can remember hearing boulders knock down walls and doors of their home. The family began racing up the stairs from the second floor of their dwelling toward the roof. As they climbed, a wall collapsed, trapping the father. Eventually Acosta and his brothers dragged the older man to safety, but within hours he was dying, vomiting blood.
The 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 Chinchina, a city of about 34,000. Some 200 families fled the area. Chinchina, six miles from the base of the volcano, escaped major damage, but civil authorities estimate that 1,090 people died in the immediate area.
What was left behind in Armero, in Henao's words, was "one big beach of mud." A viscous gray layer, between 7 ft. and 15 ft. thick, covered most of the town. Thousands of bodies were buried in the sludge, their location sometimes marked by pools of blood on the surface. Other corpses lay half visible in miniature bogs that were as treacherous as quicksand. Some exhausted survivors lay on the surface of the mud in shallows, or staggered along in shock on drier ground. Many of the living were naked or only partly clothed; their garments had been torn from them by the swift-moving lahar. All were encrusted with ash-colored goo that quickly hardened under the next morning's sun into a gritty carapace. Many of the survivors had suffered serious injuries. A sepulchral silence reigned over the devastated town.
Most horrifying of all was the plight of those who were trapped, still living, in the mud. Many were buried up to their necks; some had their mouths stopped with filth, so they could not cry for help. Sometimes the buried survivors were still locked in gruesome embrace with the dead. One was Omaira Sanchez, 13, who remained up to her neck in ooze two days following the disaster. When the mudslide struck, Omaira was washed up against her aunt, who grabbed hold of her. The aunt died, but kept her grip, even after rigor mortis had set in. Finally, after rescuers worked fruitlessly for 60 hours, Omaira died of a heart attack. In the days after the disaster, one doctor estimated that there were at least 1,000 living victims still trapped in the morass.
As news of the cataclysm spread, Colombia was stunned. President Betancur declared the 77 sq. mi. around the volcano a disaster zone. In Bogota, long lines of blood donors formed outside the local Red Cross building; more than 10,000 pints were collected in less than 24 hours. Residents of the capital streamed to two major collection spots in the city bearing food, blankets, medicine and clothing. By Thursday morning a caravan of 300 trucks carrying thousands of tons of relief material was headed for Tolima department, a five-hour drive over narrow mountain roads.
Pledges of outside aid came just as quickly. Along with the U.S. Army rescue helicopters, Washington's Ambassador to Colombia Charles A. Gillespie released an immediate $25,000 to local authorities. Within 36 hours the first of three U.S. C-130 Hercules transport aircraft flew from Howard Air Force Base in Panama to a Colombian military airport at Palanquero bearing some 500 family-size tents. In Washington, Jay Morris, deputy administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said that "we have been working around the clock to monitor and respond to the emergency requirements of the survivors." Administration officials affirmed that the U.S. relief contribution to Colombia would quickly top $1 million. But the total, warned Morris, "won't be tens of millions because we simply don't have that kind of money in our budget."
Private citizens also rushed to the rescue. Nowhere was the effort more frantic than in Miami and surrounding Dade County, home to an estimated 125,000 Colombian immigrants. Within hours after news of the disaster reached the city, the local Colombian consul general, Roberto Garcia Archila, was swamped with aid offers. Less than 24 hours after the eruption, an Avianca Boeing 727 left Miami International Airport laden with privately donated medical supplies. Meanwhile, Spanish-speaking ham-radio operators in Miami were relaying messages from Colombia to the Florida consulate, where hundreds of anxious Colombians kept a vigil, hoping for news of relatives and other loved ones in the danger zone.
Despite that rapid and spontaneous outpouring, rescue work at Armero proceeded at a slow and frustrating pace. The torrential mudslides washed away roads and bridges, limiting efforts to deliver both rescuers and relief supplies. Foul weather and the continuing down pour of volcanic ash from the smoking mountain kept Colombian helicopters away from Armero until Thursday afternoon. Only on Friday could the U.S. fly in any of the big CH-47 Chinook helicopters, capable of evacuating dozens of people at a time. In the interim, only nine small helicopters, able to carry just a handful of victims each, had flown in and out of Armero. But they performed heroically, rescuing hundreds of people from the area.
As the number of survivors increased, however, so did the size of the relief problem. In the nearby towns of Mariquita and Guayabal, hospital facilities were immediately overwhelmed. At Mariquita, authorities were laying out the wounded on any available surface, from black plastic garbage bags to burlap coffee sacks. Mudslide victims were being wrapped in tablecloths, curtains, anything that local citizens could spare. Dazed survivors, still covered with mud, roamed the town's streets looking for lost loved ones.
At Armero itself, rescue helicopters took off and landed on a grassy slope beside a lake of mud where a town once stood. A crew of 78 rescuers occupied the area, rushing gray-caked victims in stretchers made from coffee bags strung between poles. Badly overworked and undersupplied, the crew viewed the relief situation as increasingly desperate. "We are working against time," said Raul Alferez, a Colombian Red Cross worker. "There are still a lot of people out there to be rescued, and we are not getting to them."
Lamented Marta Cruz, another Red Cross worker: "We don't have the right medicines, there is no clothing, and the ground is humid. Infection is going to spread." The only food on hand for injured survivors was yogurt and sweet biscuits known locally as frena. Julian Ramirez, a mechanical engineer who had lost his five-year-old daughter in the calamity, feared that hundreds of additional survivors would die for lack of care. "They give us yogurt and frena. What good is that?" he asked.
The only answer was that it was better than nothing. Despite the lack of supplies and equipment, small miracles were taking place amid the devastation. Using a bottle of mineral water sparingly as a solvent, a young Red Cross doctor patiently removed a stifling mud casing from a toddler, to discover a girl wearing tiny golden earrings. The doctor removed mud from the child's eyes and mouth, and was rewarded with a cry of "Mami." The youngster, named Sandra, was one of only five small children rescued Friday from the mud of Armero. A three-year-old boy was found cradled by both his dead parents on a partly submerged mattress under a mango tree.
Efrain Gomez Primo, 34, had every reason to be grateful for miracles. Helplessly wedged between wooden slats in mud and water that reached up to his neck, Gomez had been lost and rediscovered three times in the wake of the avalanche. His hair and mustache matted with muck, Gomez talked as four farm workers from a neighboring town cut away the restraining slats and removed a bamboo pole that the survivor was clutching with all his strength. Next to him was the body of his landlady, who had died, Gomez said, "about an hour ago." It took three hours to rescue the man. As volunteers scooped frantically at the mud, Gomez explained that one of the earlier discoverers who had wandered away from him was his brother. Said Gomez: "He lost his wife, and it was too much for him."
Amid the frenzy, Colombians were already beginning to ask them-selves if the tragedy could have been averted or at least limited in its scope. In an article headlined A PREDICTED DISASTER, the respected Bogota daily El Espectador disclosed on Friday that the Colombian National Institute of Geological-Mining Investigations (INGEOMINAS) had published a report on Oct. 7 warning of the virtual certainty of a disaster. The report singled out Armero and the village of Chinchina as threatened sites. As early as Sept. 26, INGEOMINAS had recommended the evacuation of towns at the base of the volcano. But the Colombian Ministers of the Interior, Public Works and Transportation, and Mines and Energy all had taken turns depreciating the danger.
In private, the Colombian government showed far more concern about the situation. In the second half of October it invited a group of Italian volcanologists to visit Colombia. Their task: to give an opinion on the danger posed by Nevado del Ruiz. The team's conclusions were alarming. Said Franco Barberi, a professor of volcanology at the University of Pisa: "The volcano has 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.
According to Herd, of the U.S. Geological Survey, the Colombians had begun to take precautions when the cataclysm struck. Authorities had established three separate teams of experts to address the volcanic threat: one to monitor the development of the hazard, another to gather information about the likely outcome of an eruption and a third to formulate an emergency plan. As part of that response, the Colombians had produced the so-called hazard maps that so accurately laid out the path of the looming disaster.
Said Herd, who wrote his doctoral dissertation on the Nevado del Ruiz volcano: "The Colombians were sincerely trying to respond to the hazard." Agreed Luis Eduardo Jaramillo, an INGEOMINAS spokesman: "We warned the people living in the area that something could happen. We gave them instructions about what to do if it blew up." Yet in their report the Italians criticized the Colombian precautions as "absolutely inadequate."
Not for nothing, however, are calamities like Nevado del Ruiz known as acts of God. For the people who lived and worked in the farmlands around the simmering mountain, the early signs of eruption were accepted as part of the environment. Nor could anyone have predicted that the disaster would finally take place at night, the time of maximum vulnerability. Said Father Augusto Aosorio, one of Armero's parish priests: "We knew the danger was there. But we just cheerfully got accustomed to it." Aosorio was extraordinarily lucky: only hours before the eruption, he had left town to meet with his bishop in Ibague.
The second-guessing about the event could go on for months. Meanwhile, the danger from Nevado del Ruiz may still be far from over. Says the University of Pisa's Barberi: "Other explosions are certain to take place. It may be that the phenomena will be of minor intensity, but they will be equally dangerous." For one thing, he asserts, the large glaciers that surround the crater of Nevado del Ruiz have still not been warmed by the eruptions. If those rivers of ice should melt, they would create additional mud avalanches that would place rescuers in serious danger.
As the week progressed, fears of a second disaster sent occasional flashes of panic through the shell-shocked rescue camps. When President Betancur helicoptered into Mariquita for a second visit to the devastated zone, he encountered just such a scene. Said a local witness: "People were crying desperately, seeking out refuge in places that were more secure, while a vehicle with a loudspeaker rolled through the streets urging them to evacuate in order to avoid another Armero." Betancur struggled to restore calm. "Please, please, no more unfounded rumors," he exhorted. "We cannot be overcome by panic."
At week's end the rescue squads working heroically in the shadow of the volcano were giving fear little thought. All their efforts were bent on saving the living. Only now and then did they have time to think of the thousands of dead who lay beneath their feet. Giving in fully to the release of grief was a luxury that Colombia could not yet afford. --By George Russell. Reported by Bernard Diederich/Armero and Tom Quinn and Gavin Scott/Bogota
With reporting by Reported by Bernard Diederich/Armero, Tom Quinn and Gavin Scott/Bogota