Omayra Sánchez Garzón was photographed by a journalist while slowly losing her life in the Nevado del Ruiz volcano eruption of 1985
Omayra Sánchez Garzón is a name you might not be familiar with, but a harrowing image of her bloodshot-eyed fight for survival will change all of that.
From Columbia, the teenager was sadly one of tens of thousands of victims of the Nevado del Ruiz stratovolcano eruption of 1985, which killed 22,000 locals from the surrounding towns of Armero and Chinchiná on 13 November.
Dormant for 69 years up until that fateful day, the Nevado del Ruiz unleashed pyroclastic flows upon the mountain’s glaciers, which in turn created four violent mudflows and landslides that engulfed the unprepared townspeople.
Only two months earlier, the government had been warned to evacuate the area by concerned volcanologists.
The 13-year-old was one of those trapped beneath debris, with her legs submerged by the thick muddy water and although rescue teams attempted to free her, they didn’t have the necessary life-saving equipment on hand.
Present at the disaster scene was photojournalist Frank Fournier, who documented Omayra’s plight with a World Press Photo of the Year winner in 1996.
Due to prolonged water submersion and the pressure from the debris, the youngster’s eyeballs appeared to turn fully black.
Fournier later told the BBC: “She was in a large puddle, trapped from the waist down by concrete and other debris from the collapsed houses.
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“She had been there for almost three days. Dawn was just breaking and the poor girl was in pain and very confused. All around, hundreds of people were trapped. Rescuers were having difficulty reaching them.
“I could hear people screaming for help and then silence – an eerie silence. It was very haunting.”
Recalling the sheer helplessness of Omayra’s situation, he added: “The rescuers kept coming back to her, local farmers and some people who had some medical aid. They tried to comfort her.
“When I took the pictures I felt totally powerless in front of this little girl, who was facing death with courage and dignity. She could sense that her life was going.
“I felt that the only thing I could do was to report properly on the courage and the suffering and the dignity of the little girl and hope that it would mobilise people to help the ones that had been rescued and had been saved. I felt I had to report what this little girl had to go through.”
He also spoke about his photograph in 2022, adding: “It was a voice of an ordinary little girl who will cross land and time, and will bounce and pierce the heart of millions of people.”
The teenager unfortunately died from a likely cause of gangrene or hypothermia after spending a gruelling 60 hours trapped.
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