“Now We Are Really Going to Die!”

Obdulia Arce Murillo, mother of nine and associated with Jehovah’s Witnesses in Armero, was completely overwhelmed by the avalanche​—yet lived to tell the story. She relates: “I fled into the street with my children and tried to climb up on a gasoline truck. Then the waters came. I threw myself to the ground. The water was coming awfully high . . . and it roared and roared. I shouted ‘Jehovah! Jehovah! Now we are really going to die! It’s the end!’ Then lots of poles and posts came rushing through in the water. One struck me on my left side, and that’s when I lost hold of my little daughter.

“I got all tangled up with a pole and some electric cables. Then one of my daughters, who had climbed up on some sacks of coffee, shouted, ‘Duck down!’ When I ducked, I felt as though a train were running over me. It was the mud. I could no longer see because I was buried under the mud. I was completely covered.

“I felt the force of the mud that was pulling me away. I tried to shout, and my mouth filled with mud. I was choking . . . I swam and strained until I at last got my face above the slime. With my hand, I pulled the mud out of my mouth with such force that I thought I had ripped my face open. I was sure I was going to drown, but at last I could breathe and shout. How relieved I was to get my face out of the mud!” But it was to be many hours yet before she was finally rescued.

Another Witness, Elena de Valdez, and her family made it to high ground behind the town. She reports: “We had just arrived at the foot of the hill when we heard cries and screams of people behind us, engulfed in the deluge. Shortly, others began to arrive, completely covered with mud. We could hear the terrifying noise that ‘thing’ made. It sounded horrible! And the cries of the people: ‘Help! Help! Save us! Don’t leave us to die!’”

Finally, it was all over. Only an eerie silence and inky blackness remained. Jorge Castilla, safe on a farm on the outskirts of Armero, said he could feel “an atmosphere of death in the night.” He added: “Survivors​—old people, young people—​were coming up out of the muck, many of them injured. They looked like zombies, as if walking in their sleep. They gazed at you with a blank stare. They asked for water, nothing more. It was horrible!”

Meanwhile, out in the deep, Obdulia Arce was still struggling to keep her head out of the mud. For her and thousands of other survivors, that will always be remembered as the longest night of their lives.

Obdulia Arce appreciated the warmth of the mud, for the night was cold. During the night, she kept slipping into sleep, only to wake up gasping for air when her face dropped in the mud. Morning came, but no one saw her.

Among those waving to the helicopters every time they passed over was Obdulia, her head encrusted with dried mud. She could only wave feebly from the wrist, and all day she tried to get their attention. No one noticed her. She despaired of ever being seen. She prayed continually. She started another endless night of anguish, locked in the mud and with severe pain from her injured side.

When Friday morning dawned, she somehow mustered enough strength to shout and shout, until rescue workers combing the area finally spied her below. At 11 o’clock she cried out in sharp pain as she was pulled free and hoisted into a helicopter. She was whisked away to a first-aid center and then to a hospital. She had spent 35 hours suspended in that mud.

What had happened to her children? She later learned that two perished, but her other children were swept away to the edge of the morass, and they were eventually rescued.

Many had their arms and legs badly mangled in the fury of the flood and had to suffer amputations because of the onset of gangrene. One of these persons was Epifania Campos, one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, bank employee in Armero. Sadly, she died from the effects of gangrene.

Of the 59 persons associated with the Armero Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 40 who lived in the most seriously affected parts of the town have disappeared without a trace. Three persons associated with the Chinchiná Congregation lost their lives, and some 30 others lost their homes and belongings.

Six weeks after the tragedy, I visited the site again along with Gervasio Macea, who had lived for eight years in Armero. He could not identify with precision where the Kingdom Hall used to be​—such was the total destruction. Where a town used to be, there is now a gray, wide, boulder-strewed beach in the shape of an enormous fan.