Volcano Victims Lifted to Safety : Copters Pluck Survivors From Oozing Mud

BOGOTA, Colombia — Rescue workers using a fleet of helicopters lifted survivors Friday from dark, oozing mud that rushed down the slopes of the Nevado del Ruiz volcano, destroyed the town of Armero and buried thousands of its residents.

In the government’s first official report on the world’s most deadly volcanic disaster in more than 80 years, Health Minister Rafael de Zubira estimated the death toll at between 17,000 and 20,000 and said at least 3,000 others were injured.

The disaster, with scenes of mud-caked victims looking like creatures from a science fiction world, stunned a nation still reeling from the bloody siege of Bogota’s Palace of Justice a week ago. Colombian television broadcast scenes of survivors crawling, inch by inch, through the mud.

Dead Buried in Mud

Most of the dead lay buried under vast expanses of deep, wet mud that smothered much of Armero, a prosperous farming town in a valley at the foot of the Lagunilla River canyon. About 100 miles northwest of Bogota, Armero had a population of about 25,000 before steam and gas from the erupting volcano melted its snowcap and sent avalanches of mud, rock and water racing down the canyons below.

A 70-square-mile area of once fertile coffee-, cotton- and rice-growing land was declared a disaster area, and the army took control.

On Friday, a black column of smoke rose ominously from the cone of the 17,716-foot volcano, whose name translates as “Snowpeak of Ruiz.” The mountain continued to rumble throughout the day, and the cloud of ash from the volcano drifted 300 miles to the border with Venezuela.

Government officials said residents had ignored warnings to leave their homes, but some survivors complained bitterly that they had had not been ordered to leave when the volcano erupted and some officials had even assured them that there was no danger.

“When we heard the eruption, we left our home and went to the fire department, but they told us it was nothing and they were not going to sound the siren because it would frighten people,” said Ulises Mulano Ramirez Jr., 17, of Armero.

His mother, Letitia, said, “We were waiting for the radio to put out a warning but it kept playing music.”

The Ramirez family, including Ulises and his four brothers, ran for their lives despite the official calm, and all but one survived.

Child Torn From Father

Morano, the father, said a wall of mud swept his 18-month-old son from his arms when it crashed through the town hospital, where they had taken refuge. “All we could see was a little hand above the mud,” he said.

Jorge Uribe, chief of operations in Colombia’s national Civil Defense agency, said rescue workers were unable to reach Armero on Friday by road because avalanches cut off highways to the town. Rescue operations were being carried out through an air bridge supported by a fleet of 14 helicopters, he said.

On Friday morning, the helicopters, which could not land in the muck, were plucking mud-caked survivors from high ground, from rooftops and from the high branches of trees. By Friday afternoon, Uribe said, the evacuation was almost complete.

“I think the remaining people are very few,” he said in his Bogota office.

Injured Survivors

Many of those rescued were battered, scraped and cut when a wall of mud nine yards deep tore through the town at avalanche speed, pulling rocks, timber and other debris in its wake. Open wounds and broken bones were common in those pulled to safety.

One survivor said the first wave of mud that swept through Armero on Wednesday night was ice cold, from the volcano’s melted snowcap, but successive waves grew warmer and the last was smoking hot.

The most severely injured were flown to Bogota and other cities for hospital care. Lesser injuries were treated at first-aid clinics in Lerida, Guayabal and Mariquita, three towns closer to Armero.

Authorities set up refugee camps in Lerida and Guayabal for the homeless survivors of the stricken town.

Uribe said some bodies have been recovered from Armero, but that most will remain buried under the mud until it dries sufficiently to permit the use of heavy equipment.

Mud 9 Meters Deep

“The mud is still very loose, and if you tried to move it with a bulldozer, it would just ooze back,” he said. “It is nine meters deep in places.”

Uribe estimated that 90% of the victims in Tolima province were in Armero, but the mudslides also claimed victims in neighboring communities and in rural areas along riverbeds.

On the western side of the volcano, in Caldas province, officials said that between 800 and 1,000 people were killed in the town of Chinchina and about 200 houses along the riverbank were destroyed.

Geologists had warned as early as September that, in the event of a major eruption of Nevado del Ruiz, which had been rumbling and belching steam for nearly a year, there could be disastrous mudslides on the Chinchina, Lagunilla and other rivers.

Uribe said Armero’s civil defense committee issued an alarm late Wednesday night, as the volcano began erupting, but no evacuation was begun.

‘Didn’t Believe It’

“The people didn’t leave,” he said. “The people were used to living with the problem and they didn’t believe it.”

He said the mudslide apparently killed all but one of the Armero civil defense committee’s 42 members. The chairman was out of town at the time.

Oscar Zuluaga, director of volunteers for the Colombian Red Cross, said all but 11 of the 82 Armero Red Cross committee members are also believed to have died in the avalanche.

“The local people didn’t think it was going to be so big,” Zuluaga said.

He said the Red Cross estimates that a total of 20,000 people were killed in the disaster, 1,500 were injured and up to 15,000 were left homeless.

The Red Cross is channeling donated food, medicine, clothing and other provisions to the survivors. Red Cross volunteers also have joined civil defense workers, soldiers and policemen in rescue operations.

Dragged for Miles

Alicia Munoz and three other Armero residents were rescued from the riverbed several miles downstream from the town. “The mud dragged us all that way,” Munoz said in Bogota’s Kennedy Hospital, where she was taken for treatment of multiple abrasions. She said she did not know what happened to her two children and her husband.

Armero’s local radio station told residents at 3 p.m. Wednesday not to worry about increasing volcanic activity, according to Munoz. But after 9 p.m., when a thundering explosion issued from the volcano, the radio “advised us to go to the stadium and protect ourselves any way possible,” she said.

But that warning came too late, she said. The mud rose in the riverbed and began tearing away “houses, trees, and everything in its way,” she said.

Father Jose Rafael Goberna, director of the private Geophysical Institute of the Colombian Andes, said in an interview that evacuation plans should have been developed by the civil defense organization and the Red Cross long before this week’s disaster.

“When there is no immediate danger, people are calm about things,” Goberna said. “They didn’t hurry because they didn’t think the thing would come so soon.”