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Bogota (AFP) – The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, asked this Wednesday, April 5, to speed up the evacuation of some 2,500 people who live in the areas surrounding the Nevado del Ruiz volcano, in the center of the country, at risk of eruption since March 31.
“We have asked the Departmental Risk Councils to speed up the preventive evacuation of 2,500 families who are at high risk due to the Nevado del Ruiz contingency,” the leftist president wrote on Twitter.
We have asked the Departmental Risk Councils to speed up the preventive evacuation of 2,500 families that are at high risk due to the contingency of Nevado del Ruiz. The government is attending the situation first hand and articulating all the capacities.
— Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) April 5, 2023
The Geological Service (SGC) has been registering an increase in the seismic activity of the volcano since the end of March, which could trigger an eruption in a period of days or weeks.
On Friday the authority increased the level of risk of expulsion of incandescent material to “orange alert”, when the ghost of the worst natural disaster in the country’s history still haunts, which in 1985 left 25,000 dead.
“During the first hours of today, April 5, more than 2,600 earthquakes have been recorded” that reached Local Magnitudes (ML) of 3.9, “the largest” since that area of the volcano has been monitored almost four decades ago, he said. the SGC in a bulletin.
“We are concerned that the earthquakes are getting closer to the crater and that, according to volcanologists, is not the best of signs,” added presidential adviser Luis Fernando Velasco in a statement to the media.
Gunsmith, an open wound
With almost 5,400 meters of altitude, Nevado del Ruiz is remembered for the tragedy in the missing city of Armero in November 1985, when its eruption caused an avalanche that left thousands of deaths.
The world remembers Armero for the face of Omaira Sánchez, a 13-year-old girl who was trapped in the rubble of her house and up to her neck in mud. The international media recorded her three-day agony.
The departments of Tolima, Caldas, Risaralda, Quindío and Cundinamarca are on alert, authorities reported.
Some 57,000 people residing in areas near the smoking crater are under “high threat,” according to the Disaster Risk Management Unit.
Nicknamed the “Sleeping Lion,” the volcano became active in the late 1980s, after decades of silence.
with AFP
