Horrific eruption in Guatemala by Volcan de Fuego leaves hundreds dead, towns covered in ash, and families separated; disaster continues to brew and grow

Volcan de Fuego plagues Guatemala as ash blankets the cities and towns of its inhabitants after its initial eruption on June 3rd. Since then, tragedy has struck everywhere, from the growing numbers of victims who could not make it out from the ash fall to the towns that have been deserted. Initially after the volcano’s eruption, the people of Guatemala stayed put in their homes, and as counterintuitive as it sounds, it was an unspoken consensus. They gambled their lives with the hope that the luck that they had for decades would help them again; however, this was not the case this time. Before they knew it, it was too late. Ash and toxic gases lunged towards the towns, and people were forced now to flee their homes with none of their tangible possessions. There was simply no time to grab anything except run with the clothes on their backs. Trees and shrubs were swallowed as well as pets and wild animals. The eruption held no mercy towards any of the inhabitants. Similarly in the nuclear incident that took place in Chernobyl in 1986, many casualties were faced by the inhabitants of Chernobyl. The explosion that occurred at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the northern Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic exposed high amounts of radiation to the inhabitants, and nobody was prepared for its consequences. In an excerpt of the book, “Voices from Chernobyl”, a father whom lost his daughter to the accident says, “We didn’t just lose a town, we lost our whole lives.” His daughter and wife were both hospitalized, and faced serious side effects of the radiation, both constantly on the brink of death. In both of these cases, the experiences of the people of Guatemala and the people of Chernobyl can be paralleled as towns were fled as lives were and are changed forever. Those who were sent in to neutralize and help victims out of the situation were also poisoned by the radiation, and sent to hospitals to die. Even today, Chernobyl is considered uninhabitable as radiation has soaked into the earth and polluted the air, just as ash has taken over the towns of Guatemala, leaving them all uninhabitable as well. There are reports that there is no way that survivors can be found in the already deserted towns. Additionally, there are so many bodies buried under the knee high dust and ash that it is almost impossible to find them without crushing them under heavy machinery. I feel as though such terrible disasters are never properly prepared for as people continue to lose their lives to the volcanic destruction as well as the deaths that were spread across a timeline after the Chernobyl incident. After so many tragedies, one would think that governments would be more well equipped to aid its people; however, this is yet to be seen. Sob stories and heart aching articles are shared after each disaster, but nothing seems to change on the higher levels that actually matter. Talk does nothing as it circulates and dies within a matter of days.

I initially read up about the Guatemalan disaster on Twitter when it first began trending, and within 48 hours, it no longer showed up on my feed. The same people who tweeted about the passiveness of our media and the urge to help the people of Guatemala also became quiet within hours. Is it not so strange that this seems to be a reoccurring trend? Let me fit in here now that at least 1.7 million people have been affected by the volcanic eruption, and death tolls have risen to 114 as of June 14. How much longer are we going to cry for help for these helpless people, and do, not even the bare minimum, to help them? Simple rhetorics are always used in the media to create “juicy” stories, but never really to promote change or anything noteworthy. On a more local level, police brutality and unjust murders, for example, have been a significant issue in the United States; however, after each incident of a Black person being wrongfully imprisoned or murdered by the hands of those who are supposed to be protecting us, we talk about it for a couple days, if not, weeks, until it is forgotten by the general public.

The people in Guatemala are currently searching for their missing family, and mourning for their lost ones. More and more articles pop up on Google every couple of hours to update us on how much worse the destruction has gotten. Almost every article is just as disheartening as the last. According to ABC News, many of the survivors lost about 10 to 50 of their relatives, but “refuse to give up hope of finding relatives — or at least their remains.” To search for as much as closure is what these people are left with.