Colombia’s Plain of Death : Volcano Survivors Angry, Bitter Over Slow Recovery

ARMERO, Colombia —  The volcanic mud that engulfed Armero last November has hardened into a dusty gray wasteland, fringed with the debris of disaster. Scattered over the desolate expanse of hardpan are dozens of small white crosses.

It is a strange and forbidding place, a dark plain of death, but not entirely lifeless. Gravediggers search for bodies, and there are many to be found. Scavengers comb the rubble at the edges of the dried mud for anything that might be worth a few pesos. The curious come to see it, and survivors come back for one more look.

Each cross bears the name of a person who died and the date of the disaster: Nov. 13, 1985.

Day of Eruption

That was the day the volcano Nevado del Ruiz erupted, melting huge quantities of glacial ice at its 17,716-foot peak. The meltwater brought a late-night torrent of mud cascading down the steep course of the Lagunilla River, and it buried all but a small part of Armero, a farm center at the mouth of the river’s canyon.

The official death toll was 23,080, but the figure is approximate. Most of the dead are still entombed under the hardened mud.

Some roads through Armero have been plowed open to permit travel between neighboring towns and villages. Large signs warn that the area is dangerous because of the possibility of new avalanches and contamination.

Signs Offer Warnings

Signs warn: “It Is Strictly Prohibited to Walk Around or Take Out Objects Without Written Permission” and “Vehicles in Transit Should Pass Through Armero Without Stopping or Slowing Traffic” and “Persons Who Violate These Instructions Will Be Detained.”

On a recent afternoon, several vehicles were stopped at Armero, and about a dozen people could be seen around the somber landscape. Octavio Rios, 52, stopped near one edge of the gray surface and looked down. Underneath, he said, was his home.

“I lost my wife,” he said. “She is right around here.”

Armero, before it disappeared, enjoyed considerable prosperity by rural Colombian standards, and its buried wealth is now legend.

Tales of Wealth

“This has been a gold mine,” Rios said. “There are people who have gotten rich uncovering strongboxes.”

A bare-chested man, who gave his name as Carlos Alape and his age as 23, said that he, too, had heard of treasure in strongboxes but had not found any on his frequent trips to Armero.

A scavenger, he was looking for scrap aluminum, refrigerator parts or roofing material. “It’s the most valuable thing to take,” said Alape, who sells what he finds to a dealer in nearby Venadillo, his hometown.

‘A Lot of Bodies’

“Back over there are a lot of bodies,” he said, pointing to an area where the avalanche destroyed a row of houses. They were on high ground and not completely buried, and outside one that was torn in half a skull and bones rested against a wall.

“Ay, Dios,” Ana de Marin said when she saw the bones. She and her husband had come to Armero from Bogota, out of curiosity. “It is a thing that really makes me remember my God,” she said. “Ay, Dios.”

Maj. Rafael Ruiz, the military mayor of Armero, hopes to make the place more presentable by July. That is when Pope John Paul II is scheduled to visit Colombia, and he is expected to come to the disaster site.

Ruiz said that 600 acres of dried mud will be planted with grass and trees. A chapel will be built.

‘Park of Hope’

“It is already, by decree, a cemetery park,” he said. “It is called the National Park of Hope.”

Ruiz, whose civilian predecessor died in Armero, has an office about five miles away in the town of Guayabal. He is trying to complete the removal of exposed bodies from the park, and he said he is paying 14 gravediggers about a dollar for each body they find and bury.

Asked how many bodies had been buried, he consulted a ledger and said: “I keep a daily account. . . . Let’s see . . . 4,200, more or less.”

Ruiz estimated that the job of burying the unidentified bodies will be finished by the end of March. The gravediggers find 60 to 70 every day, he said.

For a while, people caught scavenging or looting were ordered to bury bodies as punishment. But the district governor stopped that, Ruiz said, “because it was not contemplated in the statutes.”

No Control Over Looters

Because he does not have a jail, he said, there is little he can do about the looters, the valancheros.

Another problem has been the issuing of identification cards for refugees. Demand is brisk. Ruiz said the town at one time had 38,000 people, including temporary visitors, and he estimates that 24,000 to 26,000 died. But he has issued identification cards to about 30,000.

He said that people who had families or property in Armero are entitled to cards even though they did not live there at the time of the disaster. And he acknowledged that many poor Colombians, looking to benefit from refugee aid, have falsified applications for the cards.

Families with cards are entitled to a “pension” of $25 a month for each family member. They are given free food and temporary shelter and the promise of a permanent home.

Four months after they lost their town, thousands who are known to be survivors of Armero are still living with friends or relatives or in crowded refugee camps.

‘New Armero’ Planned

A government relief and reconstruction agency created in November--called Resurgir, whose name means “resurgence”--has plans for a “new Armero” of 2,500 homes at Lerida, a small community 10 miles from the destroyed town. Ground will be broken shortly.

It will be none too soon, Mayor Ruiz said, and added: “There is too much planning. It has taken too long to provide a solution.”

Earlier, Ruiz had been on the telephone with the main Resurgir office in Bogota, trying to get money for a new camp for refugees set up temporarily in Guayabal’s Roman Catholic Church.

“People are tired of being in the chapel, and the priest says he needs it for Holy Week,” Ruiz said.

Guayabal has 4,000 refugees from Armero. Many want to stay in Guayabal rather than move to the permanent settlement in Lerida.

Houses, Jobs Needed

“I think we should have about 600 or 800 houses here,” Ruiz said.

Also needed, he said, are jobs. He said he would welcome foreign donations of tools and equipment for metal and carpentry shops and other cottage industries. “I would set up a series of little enterprises so that the people can begin to feel useful again,” he said.

Jewish communities in Colombia and the United States donated a brick factory for Guayabal, and it employs 120 people, but only 40 of them are Armero refugees. Many refugees complain about the pay at the brickyard, which is about $3.30 a day.

‘A Master Builder’

Oscar Vazquez, 36, an Armero refugee in Guayabal, asked, “How can a master builder like me reduce himself to working for that?”

Vazquez lives in one of 60 concrete row-houses that have been built for refugees in Guayabal. He complains that he has no room for a garden, no sense of being in his own home.

“We lost everything,” he said, “and they have left us in ruin.” He said his wife and five children were killed in the Armero disaster, which he blames on government authorities.

‘Knew It Was Coming’

“It was the government’s fault because they knew it was coming,” he said. “They failed to tell us to evacuate the town.”

Vazquez’s complaints are echoed by many Armero refugees. Ana Beatriz Barrero, 39, said: “So much money was sent, and we are having such a hard time here. We want a house we know is ours.”

Alva Moreno, who lives in a nearby Red Cross tent camp with her husband and two children, said people are desperate to move out of the tents. “In the daytime they are very hot,” she said. “It is a hell.”

Doris Amado, one of two university psychologists working with the refugees in the tent camp, described it as an inferno of psychological and social problems. She said the people are shocked as a result of their loss and worried about the future. She said they are susceptible to exaggerated selfishness, envy, depression, fear and resentment.

Alcoholism and Quarrels

Alcoholism is common, violent quarrels are frequent, children are mistreated, complaining is constant, recriminations bitter.

“For them, the world, life itself, owes them something,” Amado said. “They demand that someone pay them for everything they lost. . . . They have to blame someone, something, for what happened to them.”

She said it would help solve the psychological problems if the people had work and lived in a permanent community and in their own homes.

“As long as the people don’t have their own space, as long as there is no group identity, the problem is much more complicated,” she said.

Impatience among the refugees has turned into widespread unrest. Leaders of a national refugee association have met frequently with officials in Bogota and have sent a list of demands to President Belisario Betancur.

Protest Over Delay

The other day, about 150 refugees in Lerida pitched two large tents on a private lot alongside the road leading to Armero. Leaders of the group said that because they had received no answer from Betancur, they had decided on a public protest. At the end of the daylong demonstration, policemen moved in and took down the protesters’ tents.

Edgar Guzman, 25, a member of the refugees association, said the main problem is Resurgir’s delay in distributing lots.

“Resurgir is working too slowly,” Guzman said. “In four months, they haven’t solved anything for us. We are tired of begging in Bogota. We get promises and promises, but they don’t follow through.”

Pedro Gomez, a wealthy real estate developer who heads Resurgir, said planning and preparation for the construction of a permanent community for the Armero refugees have not been unduly delayed.

Safest Sites Sought

Scientific studies were made to identify the safest potential sites. Socioeconomic studies were made to analyze Armero’s main functions as an urban hub and to determine what site could best fill the same functions. Meetings were held with district authorities and refugees.

At a session with 600 refugee representatives, the alternative sites were presented, “and they selected Lerida,” Gomez said.

Then began the process of buying 330 acres of land adjacent to Lerida from 14 property owners. Meanwhile, urban and architectural plans had to be drawn up and construction arrangements made.

“All this has been a very big job,” said Gomez, a dapper man with wavy gray hair and a trim goatee.

Construction to Start

Construction on streets will start this week, he said. Then church organizations, private foundations and civic groups will begin building the houses. According to the master plan, they will be one-story, with tile or metal roofs, preferably red, on lots large enough for gardens, children and chickens.

Plans also call for aid to farmers in the area, tax breaks and other benefits for small industry, and credit and training for small businessmen.

“We hope that this will become a pilot plan for economic development in Colombia,” Gomez said.

But he acknowledged that the first priority now is to get Armero refugees out of the camps and onto the land where they will resettle. He said the refugees will be allowed to camp on their lots even before housing construction begins.

“It will make the construction much harder and slower,” he said, but he added that if the refugees are not given the lots soon, “they will take them.”