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The lahar from the 1985 eruption of Nevado del Ruiz that wiped out the town of Armero in Colombia In 1985, the volcano Nevado del Ruiz erupted in central Colombia. As pyroclastic flows erupted from the volcano's crater , they melted the mountain's glaciers, sending four enormous lahars down its slopes at 60 kilometers per hour (37 miles per hour).
At 11:30 p.m., the first lahar hit, followed shortly by the others. [30] One of the lahars virtually erased Armero; three-quarters of the town's 28,700 inhabitants were killed. [27] Proceeding in three major waves, this lahar was 30 m (100 ft) deep, moved at 12 m/s (39 ft/s; 27 mph), and lasted ten to twenty minutes.
Colombia's worst natural disaster, [11] the Armero tragedy (as it came to be known) was the second-deadliest volcanic disaster of the 20th century (surpassed only by the 1902 eruption of Mount Pelée). [12] It was the fourth-deadliest eruption recorded since 1500 AD. [13] Its lahars were the deadliest in volcanic history. [14]
Nevado del Ruiz (Spanish pronunciation: [neβaðo ðel ˈrwis]), also known as La Mesa de Herveo [4] (English: Mesa of Herveo, the name of the nearby town) is a volcano on the border of the departments of Caldas and Tolima in Colombia, being the highest point of both.
Because the region became the main cotton producer in the country, the city was called Colombia's White City. It was a prosperous agricultural area until 1985. The original seat of the region was destroyed on 13 November 1985, after an eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz Volcano produced lahars that buried the town and killed about 23,000 people ...
The word lahar is of Indonesian origin, but is now routinely used by geologists worldwide to describe volcanogenic debris flows. Nearly all of Earth's largest, most destructive debris flows are lahars that originate on volcanoes. An example is the lahar that inundated the city of Armero, Colombia.
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