Victoria Bruce - No Apparent Danger: The True Story of Volcanic Disaster at Galeras and Nevado Del Ruiz

PASTO, COLOMBIA:
MARCH 12, 2000

I TS LATE MORNING , 40 degrees with a strong wind, and we are standing on the summit of Galeras, an ample 14,000-foot volcano in southern Colombia. In my backpack I have two candy barsofferings to appease the mountain, brought along at the urging of Alfredo Roldn, my Guatemalan guide. Alfredo has survived an eruption of Galeras once, and he isnt taking any chances.

Galeras doesnt like strangers.

The summit of Galeras is 500 feet above its crater. Below us, I can just make out four white specks moving against the 450-foot-high pile of rubble that is the volcanos young cone: white hard hats, required safety equipment for scientists working near the crater.

One of the four is Gustavo Garzn, a geologist from the volcano observatory in Manizales, Colombia, who is guiding three German scientists. Two nights ago, Gustavo, Alfredo, and I were graciously hosted by a local civil engineer with ties to the volcano observatory. There were two bottles of vodka, a boiling cauldron of cheese fondue, and what seemed like at least six packs of cigarettes. We spent the evening talking about the volcanoes we had worked on: Nevado del Ruiz and Galeras in Colombia, Pacaya in Guatemala, Mount Rainier in North America, Bezymianny in Russia. Alfredo brought out pictures of Pacaya erupting.

As is the case in most scientific circles, there is a closeness among the geologists here in Colombiaa nobody-understands-us-but-us camaraderie. We typically get lost in the most boring minutiae of our science, tell stupid jokes about gneiss and schist, become fascinated by the tiniest mineral grain or ripple marks across a chunk of sandstone, argue about the chemical makeup of the earths core.

I am here atop this volcano because there is a story inside this barren landscape that links scientists and nonscientists. A series of events that tore apart a city, divided journalists and politicians, played the scientists against the people. A story with centuries-old roots that escalated over a decade and culminated on this very spot in 1993 in the deaths of nine peopleGalerass first and only victims in recorded time.

A man from the volcano observatory in Pasto stands on the rim next to us. He hands me a radio. Gustavo is on the other end, a half-mile awayhe is the size of a gnat from here. Hes standing next to a fountain of steam pouring from a hole in the side of Galerass cone.

Nice day, isnt it?

Yeah, great, I say through chattering teeth.

I hand the radio back, and we hear Gustavo crackling through. Several kids have climbed down below, and Gustavo is yelling at them to leave. Its dangerous. Clouds as thick as cappuccino foam pour in and out of the crater. I wonder how the kids got down there. Galerass crater is officially off-limits.

We sit on rocks near a rope that is cleated to the summit, and we watch Galeras breathe, wispy white plumes flowing vigorously from its crater. Ten minutes later, the rope begins to flutter; a tiny form appears, wearing flat-soled rubber boots that slide and scrape on the loose rock of the precipitous slope. A progression of boys follows. The youngest looks about 8 years old. Their faces are round and smooth and copper brown. They are dressed in baggy trousers and colorful sweaters. Some are missing front teeth. They have no helmets or safety gear. They wave, smiling, and call to me in broken English.

Following the boys up the rope are the fathers, their faces carved and creased. They too are without hard hats, and they are dressed just like the boys. The men are construction workers repairing the police station. So this is how they gained access to the volcano.

I lift my head in the direction of a decrepit concrete structure a hundred yards away, a building that was nearly obliterated by the volcano in an eruption several months after that fateful day in 1993.

Youre rebuilding the police station? I ask one of the workers, a man with an angled face, a knit cap. He nods.

Do you think Galeras will erupt again?

He flashes a gapped-tooth grin and shrugs his shoulders. No yes maybe.

Hes not worried. To the people of the countryside, or campesinos, Galeras is family. The volcano may not like strangers, but he would never hurt his own.

Seven years ago, Alfredo was here with a team of scientists from Los Alamos. This time he is working for me. He is my guide, and I am asking him to relive the day of January 14, 1993. It looked much different then, he tells me. The crater is wider now. Deformes fumaroles are pouring much more profoundly, there is more steam coming from the volcanos throat. This ridge was much wider. He stops talking for a few seconds, then he remembers the moment that Galeras erupted, at 1:43 P.M . He points: Heres where I was. Heres where the journalists were. Heres where the rocks were falling. He becomes quiet and lights a cigarette with his small magnifying glass and the sun, which has momentarily sprung from the cloud cover.

Gustavo radios in to Bruno Martinelli, who is keeping tabs on the seismometers at the observatory 5 miles away in the city of Pasto. The man next to us with the radio is acting as a link between Bruno and Gustavos team working in the crater, so we can hear both sides of the conversation.

Gustavo: The gas temperatures are coming in at a thousand degrees Celsius.

Bruno: No way. Its not possible. Something is wrong with the equipment. I cant see from here, but Alfredo describes how they are taking the temperature of the superhot steam with long wires linked to a thermocouple. A thousand degrees Celsius? I dont believe it either. Sounds way too hot.

I walk east along the ridge and stand by myself, looking down into the carved-out caldera. I am 33 years old, the same age that Marta Calvache was on that day in January 1993. Like Marta, I am a geologist, but Marta grew up at the back door of this volcano, on a small farm in the village of Consac, and I was raised in the suburbs of southern California. While I hemmed and hawed and wondered what to do with my life, Marta literally took on mountains. I would like to imagine that I could follow in her footsteps, but Im honestly not sure I could. Marta is a hero. That January day, Galerass crater roared like a jet engine, shooting out black clouds with roots of incandescent fire. While a dozen men stood frozen in fear on the summit, Marta descended into the inferno.

I picture the 5-foot 1-inch scientist climbing down the rope. She tries to run across the rubble. Scorching rocks burn through her boots and sizzle on the cold ground. The volcano roars. Near a 3-foot boulder, she finds her professor, Stanley Williams. He is scorched and twisted and bloodied and is crying for help. Close to him are four more victims of the volcano, unrecognizably contorted, deep holes in their skulls. Their clothes have seared onto their lifeless bodies.

It takes over two hours for Calvache and three others to carry Williams to safety. Six more narrowly escape with their lives. Nine others would never return.

There are incredible heroes in this desolate cauldron, and there are ghosts. The path that brought them here stretches back a decade and reaches 300 miles north along the Cordillera Central. There, in 1984, Marta Calvache and a group of young Colombian scientists worked to uncover the deadly secrets of another volcano, called Nevado del Ruiz. The two volcanoes are inextricably linkedby geology, by legend, and by scientific failing. Its impossible to understand what happened here at Galeras without first going back to the terrible tragedy at Nevado del Ruiz.