https://assets-decoders.lemonde.fr/doc_happens/2309-vrai-projet-pour-prod-vivre-apres-la-catastrophe/data.txt
2023-09-25
relive-after-the-catastrophe-colombia
https://assets-decodeurs.lemonde.fr/doc_happens/2309-vrai-projet-pour-prod-vivre-apres-la-catastrophe/colombie.txt
In Bogota, the Colombian capital, Sandra Perez runs a company producing cosmetic products made from clay harvested at the foot of the Andes. “It’s a miracle mud”, she explains, checking her phone from time to time to confirm that the Nevado del Ruiz volcano, in the central cordillera, has not erupted. For weeks, the mountain has been growling insistently and occasionally spewing columns of gray and yellow smoke. The authorities, who lifted the orange alert decreed in April in June, do not take their eyes off their control screens.
“What a paradox, right?summarizes Sandra. Armero’s mud took everything from me and then made my fortune. » She was 13 years old when, on November 13, 1985, a mudslide rolling down the west side of the volcano in the dark night took away the town of Armero, and her childhood. The avalanche ripped her 2-year-old sister from her arms and killed her mother. “Crushed like in a concrete mixer”her jaw and lungs destroyed, Sandra was evacuated by the first helicopter. “Just before taking off, the pilot said to the control tower: “Confirmed, Armero no longer exists”, I will never forget this little sentence, she says. When we arrived in Bogota, the television cameras were waiting for us. An aunt who lives in Florida saw me on screen. That’s what saved me: my father, who had also survived, found me. » According to the authorities, 25,000 people died that day. Maybe more. And hundreds of surviving children were separated from their parents.
Omayra’s agony
At the head of the Armando Armero Foundation (“remake Armero”), that he created in 2012, Francisco Gonzalez is still trying to find these lost children today “who have become adults but have the right to know that they have not been abandoned”. A professional journalist, he notes: “This is research work that the authorities should have carried out at the time. As is often the case here in Colombia, civil society does the work of the State. » And he says: “Watching on television the images of the terrible earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria in February, and listening to journalists say that the children taken out of the rubble were being returned to their families, I said to myself that nothing was learned. »
Nearly thirty-eight years after the tragedy, Sandra remains convinced that her little sister survived. But she doesn’t want to take a DNA test to try to find her. “I prefer to imagine her happy, somewhere”says this woman, at the head of a family “super awesome » and a thriving business.
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