Some People Living Near Colombian Volcano Are Loath to Evacuate

Evelio Ortiz plows the land in a field near the Arenas crater, after authorities declared an orange alert at the Nevado del Ruiz volcano and asked the population for a preventive evacuation in Herveo, Colombia, on April 5, 2023. Andres Camilo Valencia/Reuters

BOGOTA—Colombia’s government is trying to speed up the evacuation of some 2,500 families living closest to the Nevado del Ruiz volcano, which is being monitored for a possible eruption, but some residents are refusing to leave.

The volcano’s eruption in 1985 killed more than 25,000 people in Colombia’s biggest-ever natural disaster, with avalanches of earth and rock fragments burying entire settlements.