02/02/2023
It’s November 1985. A Colombian family is living peacefully in the agricultural area of Armero, with their mother and father supporting the family on the modest income they pull together by working diligently at their jobs. The mother, Maria, is a nurse and has had to leave home to go on business.
Whilst she’s away, a local volcano explodes into life.
Come nightfall and Omayra, along with the rest of her family, are still wide awake. They can’t sleep because the unfurling ashfall is keeping them in a state of nervous anticipation. Things are much, much worse than they could ever imagine though. The volcanic eruption has triggered lahars, a violent type of mudflow, and one of them steamrolls its way through Armero, engulfing the town and killing thousands of its residents:
Omarya’s father, who had spent his life gathering rice and sorghum to support his family and protect their livelihood, along with the girl’s aunt, are amongst those who perish immediately.
By the grace of God or the devil’s depravity though, Omarya herself survives. Initially, she’s trapped completely under the rubble but is a fighter, so breaks open a gap just big enough to slide her hand through, allowing her to gain the attention of the rescue team.
They manage to free her up more so that her head at least was able to see the light of day above the cold, muddy water. However, there was a glaring problem — her legs were trapped. Keeping them anchored was sections of a wall, an iron bar stuck in her hip, and her dead aunt, whose hands were clutched tightly onto her legs.
For sixty hours, rescuers did absolutely everything within their power to keep her alive, and to try to free her:
Omayra was immensely brave throughout the whole ordeal; she sang songs, chatted with the workers, and asked for sweets and soda. As the end of that time frame approached, it became increasingly clear that saving her was an uphill battle though. To do so would require amputation of her legs, and doctors decided they didn’t have the necessary equipment to ensure she’d survive that procedure within these conditions.
She then began falling in and out of consciousness and hallucinating, saying she couldn’t be late for school and mentioning a Maths exam. This, along with the fact that her eyes had turned red, her face bloated and her hands whitened, forced the cold reality of the situation upon her and the people who’d been trying to save her — she was going to die. Shortly afterward, she slipped out of consciousness for the last time.
The kicker is that she needn’t have died if the authorities had properly heeded warnings about the volcano and/or had adequate resources and supplies in place ready for such a disaster. They didn’t though, and even necessities like shovels, cutting tools, and stretchers soon ran out. Omayra died only as a result of other people’s poor planning and devil-may-care attitude. To think, she would have been forty-eight this year, a woman still well in the prime of her life, living it the way she wanted, and yet that future was snatched away from her.
