LEFT TO DIE. A Young Girl's Public DEATH Being Trapped After a Mudslide - Omayra Sánchez, COLOMBIA

November 1985: Omayra Sanchez, 13 year-old victim of the
eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz volcano in Armero, Colombia
Source

You would think with all the technology at our disposal - even back then in 1985 when this tragedy occurred, that something could have been done to rescue this poor child
from the agony, she endured during her 60-hour ordeal.
The eruption of the volcano's 69-year dormancy caught everyone by surprise, including Omayra and her family but her faith was already set, living right in the path of destruction...

Omayra Sánchez Garzón (August 28, 1972 – November 16, 1985) was a Colombian girl killed in Armero, department of Tolima, by the 1985 eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz volcano when she was 13 years old. Volcanic debris mixed with ice to form massive lahars (volcanically induced mudslides, landslides, and debris flows) that rushed into the river valleys below the mountain, killing nearly 23,000 people and destroying Armero and 13 other villages.

Armero was located in the center of this photograph, taken in late November 1985.
Source

After a lahar demolished her home, Sánchez became pinned beneath the debris of her house, where she remained trapped in water for three days. Her plight was documented as she descended from calmness into agony. Her courage and dignity touched journalists and relief workers, who put great efforts into comforting her. After 60 hours of struggling, she died, likely as a result of either gangrene or hypothermia. Her death highlighted the failure of officials to respond correctly to the threat of the volcano, contrasted with the efforts of volunteer rescue workers to reach and treat trapped victims, despite inadequate supplies and equipment.

"I reached the town of Ameroyo at dawn about three days after the explosion. I met a farmer who told me of this young girl who needed help. He took me to her, she was almost on her own at the time, just a few people around and some rescuers helping someone else a bit further away…

I could hear people screaming for help and then silence – an eerie silence. It was very haunting. There were a few helicopters, some that had been loaned by an oil company, trying to rescue people.

Then there was this little girl and people were powerless to help her. 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.

By this stage, Omayra was drifting in and out of consciousness. She even asked me if I could take her to school because she was worried that she would be late.

I gave my film to some photographers who were going back to the airport and had them shipped back to my agent in Paris. Omayra died about three hours after I got there." - Photograper, Frank Fournier

A photograph of Sánchez (shown at beginning of the post), was taken by the photojournalist Frank Fournier shortly before she died and was published in news outlets around the world. It was later designated the World Press Photo of the Year for 1986. Sánchez has remained a lasting figure in popular culture, remembered through music, literature, and commemorative articles.

5 Random DEATH-related Facts (1) | PIN THAT!

5 Random Death-related Facts (1)

STUNT Gone WRONG: Jim 'Bullet' Bailey, USA

It happened on Wednesday 1 April 1981, in Hawaii, killing Aussie stuntman Jim Bailey.

Australian stuntman Jim Bailey, known as ''The Human Torpedo,'' fell 500 feet to his death from an airplane while making a film for television, authorities said. Initially, authorities said Baily was performing for ABC-TV's ''That's Incredible,'' but the show's producer denied having any connection with the accident.

Witnesses, including members of the Maui Fire Department and the rescue unit, said Bailey, a resident of Brisbane, Australia, was suspended underneath a single-engine Ballanca by a strap and belt when the belt broke. He hung onto the strap for a few seconds before falling.
Officials said the stunt called for Bailey to hang on under the plane during takeoff and slide to a landing when the plane made a ''touch-and-go'' on the strip.

Bailey had appeared twice on ''That's Incredible.'' In an episode televised Jan. 26, he was dragged behind a car and crashed head-first through a flaming wall.

On Dec. 8, 1980, an episode showed Bailey being dragged behind another car at 165 mph and then skidding 1,300 feet along the pavement. But Alan Landsburg, producer of the ABC show, said there was no connection between Bailey's death and ''That's Incredible.'' ''We have nothing going in Hawaii, we're not working there,'' Landsburg said from his Los Angeles office. ''We've been on hiatus for about three and one-half weeks.

We finished our season and we don't start shooting until June. ''The accident obviously shocks us, but there's no way it could have been our crew filming. I tell you it was not our shoot. The accident was not even remotely connected with ''That's Incredible.'' Landsburg said it was possible the accident involving Bailey was being filmed by a private company and Bailey later planned to sell the film to ''That's Incredible.'' Landsburg said accidents have occurred during previous filming for the show, prompting safeguards.

''We've set absolute limits on what we'll buy due to the accident factor,'' the producer said. ''We've had a few accidents and we didn't want any others. We made it very clear that we wouldn't consider that type of outside purchase.''

DEATH by Whirlpool, UK

Jacob Cockle seen wearing a horse mask as he moves around the whirlpool. (Video snapshot)

Daredevil photographer, Jacob Cockle, 28, often tempted fate in the waters and uploaded extreme footages to his video-sharing sites, where his efforts racked up millions of views, but his luck ran out on May 28, 2013.

As a friend looked on, he was dragged under by a whirlpool in Carnsew Pool in the estuary of the River Hayle in Cornwall - while wearing a plastic horse head mask. He used the mask as a comedy prop to include in his footage.

As he ducked underwater with a waterproof camera to get close-up footage he was dragged down and sucked into the whirlpool.

DEATH of a Race Car Driver by Flying Fire Extinguisher - Tom Pryce, SOUTH AFRICA

Pryce is the only Welsh driver to have won a Formula One race and is also the only Welshman to lead a Formula One World Championship Grand Prix: two laps of the 1975 British Grand Prix.

Wales has never had the pleasure of a Grand Prix success story - unlike the other British nations. England can boast a record eight world champions, including the last two; Scotland has two in triple-champion Jackie Stewart and the brilliant Jim Clark; whilst Northern Ireland can lay claim to two championship runners-up in Eddie Irvine and John Watson. Wales has produced just three Formula One drivers, none of whom managed a race win. However one of them was a brilliantly talented racer, and would surely have gone on to great success had his life not been cut tragically short at the South African Grand Prix of 1977.

Tom Pryce

That man was Tom Pryce born on 11 June 1949 in Ruthin, Denbighshire, to Jack and Gwyneth Pryce.
Jack had served in the Royal Air Force as a tail-gunner on a Lancaster bomber before joining the local police force. Gwyneth was a district nurse. Pryce's older brother, David, died at the age of three leaving Tom an only child for much of the time he was growing up, although his parents did foster a young girl called Sandra for a while. Pryce, known to his friends as Mald, attended Nantglyn Catholic Primary School, Denbighshire. The family later moved to Towyn, Denbighire, due to Jack's job.

Pryce took an interest in cars while driving a baker's van at the age of 10, before informing his parents that he wanted to be a racing driver. During an interview with Alan Henry in 1975, he stated that he had wanted to become a pilot, but thought he was not intelligent enough. Like many future Formula One drivers, Pryce had a childhood racing hero. In his case it was Lotus's Scottish driver Jim Clark. Pryce's mother recalled that he was very upset when Clark died at the Hockenheimring in April 1968. His father noted that "he was very upset when Jochen Rindt was killed, too". After he left school at 16, in typical pragmatic Welsh fashion, Pryce's mother insisted that he take an apprenticeship as a tractor mechanic at Llandrillo Technical College, giving him "something to fall back on", as she put it, if his career as a racing driver was unsuccessful.

In 1975 Pryce married Fenella, more commonly known as Nella, whom he met at a disco in Otford, Kent in 1973. Following the death of her husband, Nella went on to run an antiques store in Fulham, London with Janet Brise, the widow of Tony Brise, who died in a plane crash in 1975 with fellow racing driver, Graham Hill and later moved to France.

Pryce leads Niki Lauda at Brands Hatch 1974