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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Tolima
