In November 1985, the eruption of Nevado Del Ruiz in Columbia caused a massive mudslide which took an estimated 25,000 lives. Such sheer wreckage is hard to comprehend. Stalin famously said that one death is tragedy, a thousand a statistic. How does one get past the number to all the tragedies it represents? We need focal points to even attempt such a thing. When the Miami Herald sent Michell duCill and Carol Guzy to cover this event, this was their mission, though they probably couldn’t imagine what was in store for them there. “You’re hiking and walking, and you get to the point where it’s mud and you’re walking on bodies,” Guzy recalled. “It’s pretty grueling.”
The images of devastation would see both duCill and Guzy awarded her first Pulitzer prize. DuCill would go on to win another; Guzy would garner three more. In one chilling image, we see a charred arm jutting up from the hardened mud. It is arched back like a marathon runner’s; yet it stands alone like the bent bough of a plant growing out of cement. In another photograph, a man cradles the bent-up body of a mud-caked boy in front of a helicopter, a male Madonna in a running pietà. “Sometimes I would just rage inside seeing the helplessness,” Guzy remembered. “Just to be able to deal with this I would seek out those moments of humanity and courage.” Such a moment of courage in the face of helplessness was that of thirteen-year-old Omayra Sanchez trapped in ash and concrete debris and neck-high water for three days. “No one could understand how they could be so close and holding her, and she was talking to us and talking to her mother.” Omayra was not saved. It seemed strange to the witnessing world that modern technology could transmit her final moments and yet, over 72 hours, could not deliver her from the clutch of the rubble.
In 2015, the Pulitzer would again go to the coverage of landslide. The staff of the Seattle Times were awarded for their follow-up on the 2014 Oso mudslide that killed 43 people. The account delved into whether the disaster could have been avoided. This was instrumental in a $50 million lawsuit between victims’ families and the state and a timber company, as well as subsequent reforms in the timber industry. A crib wall fence on state property had been holding back earlier landslides as the company had continued to harvest on the slope not far from the neighborhood that was buried.
Similarly, Frank Fournier, who won the 1986 World Press prize for his photograph of Omayra Sanchez, said, “I believe the photo helped raise money from around the world in aid and helped highlight the irresponsibility and lack of courage of the country’s leaders.” This helped him brush aside, even welcome, the controversy around his photograph, as he was accused of being parasitic of the situation. Even though powerless to save her as Guzy and duCille and the emergency responders were, he was able to capture the moment in a powerful way, a way that moved people. This is a power that ought to be prized and protected, for what it can do in the world. Beyond giving such images the acclaim they deserve, we must recognize and guard the force of images that acts through our imaginations upon our wills.
