Volcanic Devastation of Armero
This natural disaster took 22.000+ lives 33 years ago in Colombia. What's worse, the eruption was predicted months before the event. It is a striking example of government's inadequacy and failure to react appropriately.
Remember Pompeii? Since 79 AD a lot of things has changed. Volcanoes, however, did not. They are still as deadly and need to be taken seriously.
The Armero tragedy was one of the major consequences of the eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz stratovolcano in Tolima, Colombia, on November 13, 1985. After 69 years of dormancy, the volcano's eruption caught nearby towns unaware, even though the government had received warnings from multiple volcanological organizations to evacuate the area after the detection of volcanic activity two months earlier.
Perhaps, you have seen this photo before?
Omayra Sánchez Garzón was a 13 year old Colombian girl, who died shortly after the photo was taken, on November 16. She was trapped for 60 hours in debris and died in agony. The relief workers reached the site only after 12 hours since accident, leaving thousands of people like this girl helpless and doomed to a slow agonizing death. Read again, 60 hours straight. They were unable to save her even in all this time after they did arrive.
It could be prevented so easily if only govt listened to scientists who repeatedly warned of the possibility of eruption, witnessing tell-tale signs of building pressure inside the volcano and clear evidence of magma rising.
The catastrophe shocked the nation, the ongoing presidential election was stopped and even rebel forces ceased their warfare for a while.
In the aftermath of all this mess nobody seemed to take the responsibility, causing public outrage. The most active campaign came from mass funeral in Ibagué for the victims, stating that "The volcano didn't kill 22,000 people. The government killed them."
Armero was never rebuilt after the tragedy. Instead, the survivors were relocated to the towns of Guayabal and Lérida, rendering Armero a ghost town.
Thus I came to know about this place, after I shared my interest in sites like this with locals in Pereira. So, after visiting the abandoned Panopticon prison in Ibague, I went straight to Armero to witness the consequences of the disaster that happened so many years ago.
What is left of once flourishing Armero is a sad sight nowadays. A sprawling graveyard and empty concrete boxes of buildings, entangled with vines and roots as the nature reclaims what belongs to it.
Nobody lives here. The place has a museum and a memorial built on site and people visit them sometimes. Some locals are even making a living by selling DVDs with documentaries about Armero to visitors.
Many a house is signed by its former residents in hopes the ghost town will be reclaimed one day. An unlikely event, considering that volcano is still there, laying dormant until the next brutal explosion.
What transpired here 33 years ago taught humanity a costly lesson. Since then dangerous volcanic eruptions in Colombia (including this same Nevado del Ruiz in 1989) were taken seriously and the endangered population evacuated in time to not allow another Armero to happen.
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Yes, of course I remember this tragedy lived by the Colombian people 33 years ago ... where a runaway stream swallowed a town of 50,000 inhabitants, Armero, and with it almost half of its population. The eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz volcano emitted a quantity of burning lava; the lava melted its perpetual snow, the melted snow was added to several streams down the mountain, overflowed, fattened with everything that was in its path and the immense mud moved forward without brake to find, at night, Armero, almost 50 kilometers of the crater. Melted snow, mud, rocks, trees falling at full speed. It's that simple The simplicity of nature, which sometimes unleashes a devastating fury, plunging the whole world into impotence.
And the Omayra girl, what you say is completely correct, we can not understand how nobody could get it out of the water, because you did not use a simple pump, a pair of hands with buckets, to reduce the water that threatened it-it died of a heart attack- , how is it explained that there were cameras and photographers and no one jumped into the water to free the legs of that girl that the world finally saw die live.
The beauty of the top of the Nevado del Ruiz volcano does not show those who do not know its past, the danger of its presence and the brutality of its actions.
The Liberator Simòn Bolivar, in the year 1812, in front of the devastation that generated a very strong earthquake in several cities of Venezuela, said: "If nature is opposed, we will fight against it and we will overcome it", is a very famous phrase in our history, but the truth is that nature hides scenarios and situations of such unpredictable magnitude that it is impossible to stop it when it is unleashed.
In Venezuela, in 1999 a similar tragedy occurred, but not originated by a volcano, but originated by a landslide in the mountains surrounding the town of Vargas, intense rains of several days that generated the fury of several mountain rivers, which together with mud, stones and everything they got in their way, they also buried an innocent people who were also caught unawares.
One of the multiple images that exist of the tragedy of Vargas in Venezuela (1999)
Sad memories...
Greetings @nameless-berk
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People believe nature is something they can control or they take its power as a joke but that's not the case at all. My dad always tell me we have to respect everyone and everything, including mother nature because when we least expect things like a volcanic devastation can happen. So sad to see how Armero is now a ghost town because of the lack of attention from the government to something they could have prevent.
Yes, my point exactly. Don't fuck with nature, it will bite you in the ass.
I didn't read of this disaster, but I can think of others which occurred in the states with similar warnings left unheeded by those in power. Thank you for sharing the article and photos. I'm glad that Columbia takes the warnings more seriously. Nice article, but heartbreaking.
Your post is informative and thought-provoking. I’ve been to the west and east of Armero but didn’t know this place till just now. Do you know that abandoned shit weekly contest? Perhaps some photos here can be entered for a certain weekly theme.
I believe I used the right tag, but they didn't give a shit about my post for some reason.
😂 And it’s a contest about shit... I didn’t notice you already used the tag. I haven’t checked their recent themes yet, is it because your abandoned photo doesn’t fit their theme of this week?
Maybe, I'm not gonna tailor my work for the contest specifically. Not this one, at least as it expresses my own thoughts in the form I deem necessary. Some time later I can enter a contest with a photo or something. Thanks for the involvement!
What seriously sad story !!! :( It is even sadder to hear that such tragedy were able to be prevented. I do not know what else I should write about it. In my opinion To travel means also visit location like that!!! Thanks for sharing!
Yeah, I grew bored of standard touristic destinations. It's time to explore the unexplored places where no lameass tourists are willing go.
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