Humanity has more than once experienced the insidiousness of extinct volcanoes, which for a long time did not show signs of life. On the island of Martinique, located in the garland of the Lesser Antilles, six kilometers from the Mont Pele volcano in a cozy bay, the picturesque city of Saint Pierre was founded. Thirty thousand residents of the city and its environs did not even know about the danger threatening them, although there were reasons for alarm. The townspeople almost did not pay attention to the cloud of smoke sometimes rising over the top of the mountain until the spring of 1902.
In July 1912, the Katmai volcano awakened in Alaska and began to operate. For many hundreds of years, the Bezymyanny volcano in Kamchatka did not manifest itself in any way, just as the extinct volcano Helgafel (Iceland) did not cause fear among the inhabitants of the port city of Vestmannaeyjar. In the spring of 1982, the El Chichon volcano exploded in Mexico after 1200 years of sleep. The last time it was examined by German scientists was in 1928 and since then it has not aroused much interest among naturalists.
But, perhaps, the most terrible lesson of human trust in the extinct mountains was taught by the Ruiz volcano. Its height is 5398 meters, it is located in Colombia, 150 kilometers northwest of its capital - the city of Bogota. The last time Ruiz erupted was in 1595. Since then, for almost five hundred years, he did not show any signs of life, and for a long time he was considered, if not extinct, then dormant. However, on November 12, 1985, the volcano suddenly woke up, and ash ejection began in the second half of the Arenas crater.
The next day, at 21:00 local time, several explosions were heard one after another. The power of the strongest explosion, according to experts, was about ten megatons. A column of ash and debris rose into the sky to a height of eight kilometers. The eruption that began caused the instantaneous melting of vast glaciers and eternal snows lying at the top of the volcano. Down the slopes of the Ruiz down into the valley of the Lagunilla River, the resulting mudflows of stones, water and ice rushed. By nightfall, giant lavas from boiling mud, rock debris and ash rolled to the city of Armero, which was located about forty kilometers from the valley.
Armero and the surrounding villages had a population of about fifty thousand people. Late in the evening (at 23 o'clock) a mud-stone stream, five or more meters thick, covered the city. Twenty thousand people almost instantly found their death in a raging mess of mud. According to the miraculously survived residents, it was a terrible night. The only one who managed to escape was the one who, upon hearing the approaching roar, immediately ran out of the house and managed to run to the nearest hills. From them, people watched how roaring mud devoured their homes, schools, churches, theaters. The situation was aggravated by the darkness and unbearable heat from the hot falling ash.
Here is how a woman who survived the catastrophe tells about that terrible tragedy: “… people rushed about the city streets in panic. The lights went out, and everything was illuminated only by the nightmare red glow of the volcano. The earth opened up and swallowed people. And then everything was covered with mud. I saw my sisters choke in it, but there was nothing I could do about it. I miraculously managed to climb the tree, despite the fact that both of my legs were broken. Hot ash continued to fall from the sky, and therefore there was an unbearable heat."
A huge stream of deadly slurry practically wiped out the city of Armero. Only a few dilapidated houses have survived from the once clean, green town with a population of 21 thousand people. More than two-thirds of its residents were left lying under a thick layer of mudflows and debris.
Not only Armero died, but also a number of villages. Numerous victims and destruction were also in the village of Chinchina, located 27 kilometers from the volcano. Such settlements as Libano, Murillo, Casabianca and others suffered greatly from the eruption. Mudflows damaged oil pipelines, and the supply of fuel to the southern and western parts of the country was cut off. As a result of the sharp melting of the snow lying in the mountains of Nevado Ruiz, the nearby rivers overflowed the banks. Powerful streams of water washed out highways, demolished power and telephone pylons, and destroyed bridges.
Promotional video:
After a five-century hibernation, the raging Ruiz practically destroyed everything around him within a radius of 150 kilometers. The eruption caused colossal damage to coffee plantations, most of which were located in the fertile valleys in the vicinity of the volcano, and in fact coffee is the main agricultural and export product of Colombia. Many plantations were not just damaged, but completely destroyed, as well as dozens of trucks with bags of already harvested crops.
According to the official report of the Colombian government, as a result of the eruption of the Ruiz volcano, 23,000 people died and went missing, and about 5,000 were seriously injured and maimed. About 4,500 residential buildings and administrative buildings were completely destroyed. Tens of thousands of people were left without a roof over their heads and without any means of subsistence.
According to experts, the reason for such a formidable eruption of the Ruiz volcano was a sharp increase in pressure at a depth of 50 to 100 kilometers. It is a consequence of the fact that a giant Pacific plate, a hundred kilometers thick, is pushed under the continental shelf of the western coast of South America. As a result of friction that occurs in the bowels of the earth, excess heat is released, gases are formed and rush upward. Some scientists put forward completely different assumptions, but whatever the true cause of the eruption of the Colombian volcano Ruiz, the catastrophe that happened was the most terrible that happened in Latin America in our century.
It seemed to many then that after such tragic events, Ruiz would again calm down for several centuries. However, this volcano began to show increased activity again after a few months - in mid-1986.
HUNDRED GREAT DISASTERS. N. A. Ionina, M. N. Kubeev