World Notes Colombia

When Alberto Nunez returned to the remains of his home near the devastated town of Armero last week, he was startled to see smoke curling from the earthen hut of one of his neighbors, Maria Rosa Elvira Echeverry, 66. A closer look revealed a miracle. Twenty-four days after mudslides triggered by the volcanic eruption of Nevado del Ruiz had laid waste to the town and killed 23,000 people, there was Echeverry, safe and relatively sound, in her partially mud-covered house. She had survived on a diet of cracked barley, raw sugar and rice.

Only days before Nunez discovered her, the destitute widow had run out of provisions, and was reduced to sharing a bowl of muddy water with the yellow- haired mongrel that had kept her company for nearly a month. The smoke from ^ her fire, which she had built to ward off mosquitoes and flies, had saved her life. Rescue workers whisked Echeverry to a nearby field hospital, where doctors declared her "amazingly fit, considering her ordeal." She was then transferred to an old people's home. There, her rescuers reported, she was still not sure what all the fuss was about.