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HUARAZ 1941: la laguna que SEPULTÓ un tercio de la ciudad en 15 minutos — Transcript

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0:01Good morning, Mrs. Rosa. There is a
0:04fair today. My house was here. 15
0:38minutes. That is all it took for the
0:42mountain one December morning to erase
0:44a third of the city of Huaraz. It
0:47wasn't an earthquake, it wasn't an
0:49eruption. Not a single drop of rain
0:53fell that morning, and the hardest
0:55thing to accept isn't what happened
0:58that day, but that they had been warned
1:00in writing and it was published in the
1:03newspapers. Nobody did anything. And
1:07today, 84 years later, that same lagoon
1:11has 34 times more water hanging over
1:15the city. It was December 13, 1941. And
1:21the warning had been given years
1:23earlier. An Austrian scientific
1:26commission traveled through the
1:28Cordillera Blanca measuring its
1:30glaciers. It was led by a geographer
1:34from the University of Innsbruck named
1:37Hans Kinzl, who climbed these mountains
1:40in '32, '36, and '39. Kinzl noted
1:44something that almost no one was
1:46looking at back then. The glaciers were
1:50retreating, and as they retreated, they
1:53left behind new lagoons—lagoons
1:55hanging high in the ravines, held back
1:58by loose earth dams, right above towns
2:01where people lived. The commission's
2:05forecast, written in the 1930s, was
2:08terrifyingly literal. The lagoons, they
2:12said, had reached their maximum growth
2:14and it was possible a series of
2:16discharges would begin if measures were
2:19not taken beforehand. That warning
2:22didn't just sit in a drawer. It reached
2:25the most educated sectors of the city.
2:28It was published in the newspapers, and
2:30the journalist from Huaraz who
2:32recounted all this a year after the
2:34tragedy summarized it in a single
2:36sentence. The news did not cause a stir
2:39. No one moved, no one went up to check
2:43the lagoon, no one called an engineer,
2:46and the reason is so human it’s
2:49almost tender. It had never happened
2:52before. Huaraz had never seen a tragedy
2:55like that. No city in the Callejón de
2:58Huaylas had ever experienced what a
3:01flash flood was. If it has never
3:03happened, it cannot happen. That is the
3:07reasoning that killed 18,000 people.
3:11Remember that phrase, because at the
3:13end of this video we will return to it
3:14and it will hurt more. And now, the
3:17part that makes this something worse
3:19than mere carelessness, because it
3:21wasn't true that it had never happened.
3:24It actually had happened. The thing is,
3:27no one remembered anymore. 216 years
3:30earlier, on January 6, 1725, an
3:35earthquake shook the Callejón de
3:37Huaylas. The tremor triggered an ice
3:40avalanche from the Huandoy mountain,
3:43which apparently burst a lagoon and
3:45formed a flash flood of water, mud, and
3:48rock. That mudslide came down the gorge
3:52and completely wiped out a town just
3:55north of where Yungay would later be
3:57built. Its 15 inhabitants died,
4:01practically the entire village, and
4:03they were all together because that day
4:06they were celebrating a religious
4:08festival and the mayor's saint's day.
4:11The town was called Ancash. That name
4:14might sound familiar, because it is the
4:16name the entire department bears today.
4:20The region took the name of a town that
4:22a mudslide erased from the map. Huaraz
4:26lived in a region christened with the
4:28name of a city buried by ice and nobody
4:30made the connection. 216 years is too
4:34long a time. There is no one left to
4:38tell the tale, nor grandchildren of
4:40those who lived it. It turns into an
4:43old story, almost a legend. And that is
4:47the fundamental problem of this entire
4:49story. The mountain works in centuries
4:52and human memory lasts a lifetime. When
4:56the Austrians warned in the 30s, they
4:59weren't predicting something new, they
5:01were remembering something the valley
5:04had already forgotten twice. To
5:07understand what was lost, one must
5:09understand that Huaraz in 1941 was two
5:14cities joined together. There was old
5:18Huaraz, the colonial one, huddled
5:20around the plaza, with its narrow
5:23streets and centuries-old adobe houses.
5:27And there was new Huaraz to the north,
5:30on the other side of the Quilcay river,
5:33the modern area that was being built.
5:36There were the wide avenues, Raimondi,
5:40Fitzcarrald, Garcilaso. That was where
5:45the doctors, engineers, and teachers
5:48lived, in elegant chalets with gardens,
5:51well-kept orchards, wheat mills,
5:53tanneries, and wool looms. There were
5:58noodle, beer, and soda factories. A
6:02tennis court, the tennis club, where
6:05wealthy families played. There was the
6:09school of arts and crafts, the
6:10vocational school for boys. The
6:13national girls 'school, and there was
6:16the newest thing of all, the city's
6:19pride, a three-story tourist hotel
6:22built by the central government. Huaraz
6:26had been waiting for that hotel for
6:28years. It was the sign that the
6:30Callejón de Huaylas was finally
6:32getting on the country's map. It had
6:34been inaugurated 5 days before the
6:36mudslide. 5 days. All that part of the
6:41city, the new one, the modern one, the
6:43one looking toward the future, was
6:46built over the exit of the Cojup gorge,
6:49meaning it was built exactly in the
6:52path where the water had to come down.
6:56Nobody had thought of it in those terms
6:58, because the water had never come down
7:00. December in the highlands is a rainy
7:04month. Nothing that happened in the
7:07weeks prior seemed strange to anyone.
7:10First it rained heavily, a short but
7:13intense season, the kind that leaves
7:15the hills dark and the earth soaked.
7:19And then, just before, something
7:21happened that in the mountains is
7:23called a "veranillo." 8 days of sun in
7:27a row, 8 days of sun in December, at
7:314,500 m above a glacier. For the people
7:35below, they were 8 good days. For the
7:38mountain, they were eight days of
7:40continuous melting. The water from the
7:43melted ice flowed down to the lagoons
7:45and filled them above their normal
7:47levels. And at the same time, the dam
7:50containing Lake Palcacocha—which was
7:53neither cement nor rock, but loose
7:56earth left by the glacier—became
7:58soaked; a wall of wet dirt holding back
8:01millions of cubic meters of water. That
8:06was the only thing separating Huaraz
8:07from the mountain. Down in the city,
8:10they did notice one thing. The Auki and
8:15Paria rivers were running higher than
8:17usual. In some places, they had
8:20overflowed a little. People talked
8:23about it and found a perfectly
8:25reasonable explanation. The explanation
8:29any one of us would have given is the
8:32rainy season. In December, the rivers
8:36always rise. They were right about
8:38everything, except for one thing. The
8:41water coming down didn't come from the
8:43rain, it came from above. December 13,
8:461941, fell on a Saturday. That matters,
8:51and a lot. Although at that moment, no
8:54one could know it because it was a
8:56Saturday. The schools in Huaraz were
8:59closed; the children were in their
9:01homes. Keep that detail in mind, too.
9:04We will return to it. It dawned as it
9:07always dawns in the Callejón de
9:09Huaylas. The first light breaking
9:12against the snows of the Cordillera
9:14Blanca. The light descended through the
9:16Coyllur ravine. It filtered through the
9:20groves, entered the fields, and struck
9:22the windows of the villas in the new
9:24area. In the houses, the usual noises
9:28were beginning. Breakfast, voices,
9:32those who were waking up late. Dr.
9:35Daniel Infante on Raimondi Avenue had
9:38gotten up early and was organizing the
9:41day's work. Mr. Eliseo Alarcón and his
9:45sister, Miss Matilde Turriate, were
9:48still in bed. Engineer Tupak Yupani and
9:52his family were in the apartment they
9:54occupied at the Villa Zamora. Dr.
9:57Alberto Cimmik and his family. In his
10:00elegant villa by the Villón bridge,
10:02they didn't sense anything either.
10:05Remember these names; you are going to
10:08hear them all together again, and it
10:10won't be in a house. And meanwhile, up
10:15above, at 4,550 m, shortly after 6 in
10:18the morning, the dam gave way. There
10:23was no warning, there was no tremor.
10:26The soaked earth simply stopped holding
10:29and slid away. And through the breach,
10:32millions of cubic meters of water began
10:34to pour out at once. The water in the
10:37lagoon, which until that second had
10:39been clear and still, turned black the
10:42moment it began to tear up earth. The
10:45roar climbed the canyon walls and
10:47echoed downward, toward the city. Many
10:51minutes before the water. If the flood
10:54had only been Palcacocha, this story
10:56would be much smaller. But 4 km further
11:00down, in the center of the same gorge,
11:02there was a second lagoon. It was
11:06called Jircaakococha. It was at 4,120 m
11:10and was also held back by a dike of
11:14alluvial soil. What came down from
11:18above reached it with a speed no one
11:20has been able to fully calculate. It
11:23crashed inside and raised the level by
11:25about 6 meters in an instant. The
11:28lagoon filled completely and overflowed
11:30at its lower end. Its dike, soft like
11:33the other, held out for very little
11:35time. It gave way, and at that moment
11:39the water from the second lagoon joined
11:41the first. The calculation by the
11:44experts who went up to inspect it at
11:46the end of the month is between 8 and
11:4912 million cubic meters. Water, yes,
11:52but also mud, sand, uprooted trees, and
11:56granite blocks the size of a house.
12:00This was no longer a flood; it was a
12:03solid mass in motion moving down a
12:06stone funnel. Jircaakococha disappeared
12:09that day and has never existed again.
12:13If you go up to the Cohup gorge today,
12:15there is no lagoon in the center. Only
12:18the hollow remains where it once was,
12:20and ahead of that mass, the noise
12:22descended. Those who heard it and
12:25survived spent the rest of their lives
12:28trying to describe it. They said it
12:31sounded like planes in full flight,
12:33like the rattling of machine-gun fire,
12:36like bombs exploding one after another,
12:39like an earthquake, a volcano, and a
12:41bombardment. All at the same time. One
12:44must remember it was 1941. All those
12:50people had the war on their minds, and
12:53yet, the war was the only thing they
12:56could compare it to. Minutes before 7
13:00a.m., that muffled rumble reached the
13:03city, and here two things happened at
13:06once, in two different parts of Huaraz,
13:09with two opposite outcomes. In the old
13:14colonial city, people heard the noise,
13:16didn't understand what it was, and ran
13:19uphill. They climbed to the cemetery
13:22area. They climbed to the heights of
13:24Rataquenua. In a few minutes, the hills
13:28were full of people. Those people were
13:30saved. They ran without knowing what
13:33they were running from, and that saved
13:35their lives. In the new area, the
13:37opposite happened. The residents of
13:40Raimondi and Fitzcarrald avenues heard
13:42the same thing. They looked out and
13:46reached a reassuring conclusion. They
13:49thought it was a rise in the Kilqai
13:52River, something they had seen many
13:54times before, annoying, dirty, but not
13:56deadly, and they stayed in their homes.
14:00The water entered the new area through
14:02Grau Avenue. It swept away Dr. Vidal's
14:06flour mill building. The machine's
14:10steam whistle managed to blow for a few
14:12seconds and then it didn't sound again.
14:16It entered the La Libertad National
14:19School, the assembly hall, and the San
14:21Francisco temple, leaving over a meter
14:24of mud inside. It shattered the Villán
14:27bridge, which was the pride of that
14:29part of the city. The arts and trades
14:33school was flooded and disappeared. The
14:36houses didn't just flood, they exploded
14:38. Water poured in through doors and
14:41windows. The house would fill up and
14:44suddenly burst from within. Every house
14:47that fell raised a cloud of dust. Above
14:51the black water, there was a dense dust
14:53cloud that blocked all visibility.
14:55Neighbors ran out to the yard, the
14:58garden, the street, gathered together,
15:01held hands tightly, and disappeared.
15:05Dr. Daniel Infante, who had not given
15:07importance to the danger, gathered his
15:10family in his patio and, facing the
15:12incoming deluge, shouted the only thing
15:15he had left to give: "Courage, my
15:17children!" Of all the people who were
15:20in the danger zone that morning...Only
15:22two people came out alive and were able
15:25to tell the tale. The first was named
15:28Reinaldo Coral Miranda and he lived on
15:31Fitzcarrald Avenue. 21 years later, he
15:35published what he saw. He ran out of
15:37the house with his mother and his
15:39siblings. He says it was already too
15:42late, that in those moments the water
15:44entered the avenue. The Villán bridge
15:47no longer existed, the slaughterhouse
15:49building...And the water didn't slide,
15:54it formed enormous waves. He wrote a
15:58seven-word sentence that sums up the
16:00entire deluge better than any technical
16:02report. When I turned my face, my
16:05mother had disappeared. He managed to
16:08climb onto the roof of a house that was
16:11still standing. From there, he saw the
16:14new city fall, building by building. He
16:17saw Doctor Reina's chalet fall apart.
16:20He saw Doctor Infante's house collapse.
16:24He saw the Lawn Tennis club fall. On
16:26the neighboring roof was a friend of
16:29his, a blonde boy. The two shouted over
16:32the noise to know the other was still
16:35there, until his friend stopped
16:37shouting. Coral tells it like this. His
16:40place no longer existed. Soon after,
16:43the house where he was also gave way
16:46and became just another object floating
16:49in that black mass. The second survivor
16:53was a schoolboy named Rodolfo Villán.
16:57He lived a block away from the Kilcai
16:59River. That morning, his two sisters,
17:0317-year-old Juana and six-year-old
17:05Estelita, were preparing breakfast.
17:09Rodolfo heard the noise. He climbed a
17:12courtyard wall to see better, and what
17:15he saw was a huge cloud of dust moving
17:17down the street. The three of them
17:20started running. Juana took a different
17:23path. Estelita, the six-year-old, was
17:26running behind her brother. They jumped
17:29a wall, hit a partition, dodged an
17:32obstacle, and were about to continue
17:34when the water caught up to them. What
17:38Rodolfo later wrote about his little
17:40sister is among the harshest things a
17:43Peruvian survivor has ever put in
17:45writing. He says that Estelita was
17:49struck by a tree coming like a
17:51battering ram over the water, that she
17:53didn't even cry out, that he saw her
17:55with her eyes open floating for a few
17:57seconds on the avalanche and then
17:59disappear. Rodolfo grabbed onto a tree.
18:03From there, he looked at his own house,
18:06where Nurse Flores, his son, the son's
18:09wife, and three patients waiting for
18:11injections were. He saw them all
18:14disappear into the black whirlpool.
18:18Afterward, the tree he was holding onto
18:21was uprooted and he spent a long time
18:24spinning, sinking, and surfacing. A
18:27rope saved him. Someone from somewhere
18:31threw him a rope that landed right on
18:33him. Coral and Villán. Two. The others
18:38didn't return, and it remains to be
18:40told what happened in the newest
18:42building in Huaraz. When the water
18:45entered the area, many people ran
18:47toward the tourist hotel. It was the
18:50most solid structure there was. Three
18:52stories, recently built by the
18:54government. It was the logical decision
18:57. If a flood comes, you go into the
19:00tallest and strongest building you have
19:02nearby. The water flooded the ground
19:05floor. People went up to the first
19:07floor. The water kept rising. They went
19:12up to the second, then to the third,
19:14and then to the roof, which was the
19:16last thing remaining. From the rest of
19:19the city, their voices could be heard
19:21calling for help. That is recorded by
19:25those who heard them and could do
19:27nothing. The hotel roof managed to
19:31float for a few seconds on the water,
19:33whole with the people on top, and then
19:35it fell apart. The hotel had been open
19:39for five days; it was never rebuilt.
19:43There is one final detail from that
19:44morning that is hard to read because it
19:46is the most human of all. Several
19:49people managed to get out of the danger
19:51zone. They were safe, they had made it,
19:56and they went back to their homes to
19:59pick up some money they had forgotten.
20:03None of them returned. Two hours after
20:06the dam gave way, there was nothing
20:08left of the new area of Huaraz. Nothing
20:11is not just a figure of speech. The
20:14testimony from that time literally says
20:16that nothing existed. 122 hectares of
20:20city, orchards, and avenues had turned
20:23into a stony wasteland. Where there
20:27were houses, a 600-meter-wide beach of
20:29stone remained. And on top of that
20:32beach, granite blocks brought down from
20:35the mountain weighing between 15 and
20:38400 tons. Stones the size of a house
20:42strewn in the middle of what the day
20:44before was a tree-lined avenue. The
20:48flood took all the bridges over the
20:51Quilcay and Santa rivers and damaged
20:54the railway connecting Huaylas with
20:57Chimbote. In other words, besides
21:01destroying a third of the city, it left
21:03the Callejón de Huaylas cut off from
21:06itself and the coast. Then came the
21:09worst part, which was searching for the
21:11people. Only about 500 bodies were
21:14recovered. They were taken first to the
21:18Belén hospital and from there to the
21:20cemetery, to a mass grave. The rest
21:23never appeared. Many were carried away
21:26by the Santa River downstream. Others
21:29remained under the stones where they
21:31still are. That is why—and this is
21:34important—there is not and has never
21:36been a complete list of the dead from
21:39the Huaraz flood, not even for a few
21:41hundred. There are no names, there is a
21:45number, and the number is not clear
21:47either. And here we reach a part of
21:50this story that is not usually told
21:52because it is uncomfortable. For 80
21:56years, very different figures for the
21:58dead in Huaraz have been published, and
22:00almost all of them are higher than the
22:02real one. Reinaldo Coral, the survivor,
22:06wrote in his book that authorized
22:09persons assured him they exceeded 8,000
22:12. A 1977 scientific study speaks of
22:17more than 6,000. A 1979 Peruvian
22:21bulletin says 5,000. Other works give
22:264,000. The Peruvian Red Cross's own
22:30magazine at the time spoke of nearly
22:323,000, but there is data different from
22:35all those, and it is the only one that
22:38comes from an official file: the
22:40Peruvian Red Cross. It set up an
22:44emergency social service in Huaraz and
22:46verified the requests for aid one by
22:49one by going to the field. With that
22:53count made a week after the disaster
22:56and kept in their internal file, the
22:59figure was around 1,800 dead. 1,800
23:03dead. 400 injured and nearly 100
23:07families homeless. The Ministry of
23:10Environment investigation that
23:12reconstructed all of this is
23:13categorical. That is the only official
23:17figure. And the rest are exaggerated
23:20figures that kept being copied from one
23:22another. And here it is best to be
23:24honest with you because this channel is
23:27all about that. 1,800 is a smaller
23:31number than 8,000. It sounds less,
23:35sells less, but it is the one supported
23:38by a source. And recounting a disaster
23:41with an inflated figure doesn't make it
23:43more serious; it makes it less credible
23:45. There is also a terrible reason why
23:48Huaraz did not lose even more people.
23:52And we already mentioned it at the
23:54beginning, it was Saturday, schools
23:57were closed, and the children were at
23:59home, not in the schools in the new
24:02area that were destroyed. And the
24:05mudslide came down through a ravine
24:07where there was no town before the city
24:09, and it did not touch the colonial
24:11center, which was the most populated
24:14part. A day earlier or an hour later,
24:17on a school day, this story would have
24:20a different number. Among the dead were
24:2410 teachers from Huaraz. Their names
24:27are engraved on a plaque shaped like an
24:30open book in the Pilatarac cemetery.
24:34Vicente Tupac Yupanqui, Daniel Infante,
24:37Matilde Turriate, Berenice Loli,
24:40Constantina Vizcarra, Carlos Alberto
24:43Cimic, Eliseo Alarcón, Mercedes
24:46Iberico de Vargas, Deifilia López de
24:50Salcedo, Erlinda López. If some of
24:54those names sound familiar, it's
24:55because you heard them a while ago when
24:57they were having breakfast. Now it's
25:00time to tell something that brings
25:02pride and that almost no one tells
25:04because it's not tragic. Peru reacted,
25:07and it reacted well. The Peruvian Red
25:10Cross already had a committee in Huaraz
25:13since 1938 and it mobilized on the same
25:17day as the mudslide. Help and messages
25:20arrived from Colombia, the United
25:22States, Chile, Bolivia, and Argentina.
25:26Committees from other Peruvian cities
25:28sent money. The Emergency Service was
25:31set up on December 29th in a building
25:34donated by the mayor of Huaraz, Ernesto
25:37Salazar. By mid-January, it had handled
25:41more than 1,000 requests for aid and
25:44verified them one by one, going to see
25:47where each house had been. It was the
25:50first organized registry of victims of
25:53a natural disaster ever made in Peru.
25:56That started in Huaraz. The first
25:59technical report on the cause of the
26:01mudslide was signed by two men who had
26:04barely survived that same day in the
26:06Cañón del Pato. A Peruvian technician
26:10, Alberto Giesecke, and a Canadian
26:13geologist, Luke Luther. They walked to
26:17Huaraz and offered the prefect to go up
26:19and investigate. They went up to
26:22Palcacocha at the end of December. They
26:24measured the broken dam. They measured
26:26the water marks. and they wrote down
26:28what had happened. And from all that,
26:31something bigger emerged. In 1951 the
26:35Commission for the Control of the
26:37Lagoons of the Cordillera Blanca was
26:39created. His job was to climb up to the
26:42dangerous lagoons, lower their levels,
26:44and reinforce their outlets before they
26:46burst. Between 1951 and 1957 he built
26:54safety works at the most threatening
26:57lagoons in the valley. Think about that
27:00for a moment, because it's a fact that
27:02should be talked about much more. Peru
27:06was one of the first countries in the
27:08world to set up specific engineering to
27:10deactivate glacial lagoons. No one else
27:14was doing it that way. Huaraz paid for
27:17that knowledge with 1,800 deaths, and
27:20in exchange, the country learned to
27:22look upward. And now I'm going to tell
27:25you what happened with all of that. But
27:28first, one more thing must be told,
27:30because a disaster doesn't end when the
27:32water recedes. Huaraz lost 18 lives
27:36that morning and also lost a future
27:38that it had already bought and paid for
27:40. The tourist hotel was no ordinary
27:44hotel. It was part of a Peruvian state
27:48program approved by law in 1938. The
27:53plan was to build 15 tourist hotels
27:55throughout the country. Cuzco, Machu
27:58Picchu, Arequipa, Puno, Piura, Huánuco
28:02, Trujillo, and Huaraz. It was the
28:06moment when Peru decided to show its
28:08landscapes to the world. And the
28:11Callejón de Huaylas was on that list.
28:14President Manuel Prado, in his speech
28:17on July 28, 1941, expressly named the
28:23Huaraz hotel among those to be
28:25completed that year. It was finished,
28:28it was inaugurated. It lasted 5 days.
28:32Two days after the flood, President
28:35Prado himself arrived in Huaraz with
28:37his Minister of Development to see the
28:40debris with his own eyes. In 1944, a
28:46project was prepared to replace it. It
28:49was never executed. In 1950, an
28:54economist made a list of the great
28:57tourist hotels in Peru: Cuzco, Arequipa
29:00, Puno, Trujillo, Chiclayo, Chimbote,
29:03Piura, Ica, Paracas, and Iquitos.
29:07Huaraz does not appear on that list.
29:10They had nothing to list. We had to
29:13wait until the 60s, more than 20 years,
29:15for the city to have a hotel of that
29:18level again. Cities like Piura or
29:21Huánuco have spent more than 70
29:23consecutive years benefiting from the
29:25hotel they got in that distribution.
29:29Huaraz lost theirs in one morning.
29:32Something similar, and sadder, happened
29:34with education. The Huaraz School of
29:37Arts and Crafts had been created by law
29:40in 1920. The city waited 16 years for
29:44it to be built. It was inaugurated in
29:46April 1936 and operated for just 5
29:50years until the water took it away. It
29:53was never rebuilt. The school where the
29:57young people of Huaraz learned a trade
29:59simply ceased to exist. The Colegio
30:03Nacional de la Libertad, the oldest in
30:06the city, lost its physics and
30:08chemistry labs, its natural history
30:10museum, and part of its library. Its
30:14director, Mariano Espinoza Chávez,
30:17survived the Huaraz mudslide and began
30:21a new pavilion. He died 4 years later,
30:25in 1945, in another mudslide, the
30:29Chavín one, because that is what is
30:31almost never said about the Callejón
30:33de Huaylas. 1941 was not an exception.
30:39It was one episode in a series when the
30:42dam burst in 1941. Palcacocha lagoon
30:47emptied almost completely. It was left
30:50with less than 500,000 m³ of water. A
30:54puddle compared to what it had been.
30:57For some decades, Palcacocha stopped
31:00being a problem. The problem had solved
31:05itself, in the worst possible way, but
31:07the glaciers that feed it, the
31:10Palcaraju and the Pucaranra, kept
31:12retreating and, as they retreated, left
31:15room behind. The lagoon started to fill
31:20up again, slowly, year after year,
31:22without anyone below having to know. In
31:262009, the Glaciology Unit of the
31:29National Water Authority measured the
31:31bottom of Palcacocha precisely. The
31:34result was 17,325,000 m³ of water,
31:40more than 34 times what remained after
31:42the disaster and quite a bit more than
31:45what was there the day it burst below
31:47that lagoon. Today there is no city of
31:5220,000 people like in 1941. There is
31:57one of about 150,000. Calculations that
32:01have been made estimate that between
32:0445,000 and 50,000 people live today in
32:06the area where the water would come
32:08down. And this is not a desk theory. It
32:14almost repeated itself more than once;
32:17on March 19, 2003, a piece of the left
32:20lateral moraine of Palcacocha detached
32:23and fell. into the lagoon. It raised a
32:28wave of more than 8 m that overflowed
32:30the dam. It destroyed a protection wall
32:34and eroded part of the containment. It
32:37is exactly the same mechanism as in
32:401941. That day Huaraz was saved by a
32:45very little and almost no one found out
32:48. In 2002, at the Safuna Alta lagoon, a
32:52landslide generated a 75 m high wave.
32:57At the 513 lagoon in Carhuaz, an ice
33:01avalanche raised a 28 m wave. In 2012,
33:06in the Santa Cruz ravine, one lagoon
33:09overflowed and burst the dam of the one
33:12it had below the mountain. He has been
33:15warning for decades and this time he
33:17does it in writing and confirms as an
33:20engineer. The Peruvian glaciologists
33:23themselves who led the Huaraz
33:25glaciology unit have said by name and
33:28surname that the danger of Palcacocha
33:30is high. The dam that today contains
33:35those 17 million cubic meters is about
33:388 meters high and they themselves state
33:41that it is not enough. A collegiate
33:44report submitted to the Presidency of
33:46the Council of Ministers recommended
33:48safety works and removing at least a
33:50third of the water from the lagoon. The
33:54containment structures currently in
33:56place date back to the 70s, and that
33:58same report states they are already
34:00insufficient. Since 2011, what controls
34:04Palcacocha is a system of siphons—
34:07tubes that continuously drain the water
34:09. The official document describing it
34:14states that this siphoning was a
34:16short-term, temporary emergency measure
34:19. Temporary. It has been in place for
34:22over a decade. The definitive project,
34:25the reinforced dam and the discharge
34:28channel, remains unbuilt. The
34:32Comptroller General of the Republic has
34:34called it an urgent necessity, and one
34:36final detail completes the circle of
34:38this story: the area where the 1941
34:41flood descended. That 122-hectare stony
34:47area is once again covered in houses
34:50today. Huaraz rebuilt over the water's
34:54path with permanent building materials,
34:56some several stories high, in the same
34:59spot it already passed through once
35:01before. And there is a detail within
35:04that detail that is what truly keeps
35:07one up at night. Do you remember that
35:09in 1941 the children were saved because
35:13it was a Saturday and the schools were
35:15closed? Today, within that same flood
35:19zone or right next to it, stand the
35:22Colegio Nacional de la Libertad, the
35:24oldest in the city, and several other
35:27schools. And there is also the main
35:31campus of the National University of
35:33Ancash Santiago Antúnez de Mayolo.
35:37Thousands of students every single day
35:39are on the exact path where the 1941
35:41flood descended. That it was a Saturday
35:46was pure luck. And luck is not a
35:49prevention plan. This story has one
35:53final chapter, and it begins with a
35:54farmer. His name is Saúl Luciano
35:57Lliuya. He is from Huaraz; he farms the
36:01land and also works as a mountain guide
36:04in the Cordillera Blanca. He lives,
36:07like 50,000 of his neighbors, beneath
36:09Palcacocha. He has climbed up to the
36:13lagoon many times. He knows perfectly
36:16well what hangs over him. In 2015, he
36:18did something no one had done before in
36:21Latin America. He sued a German company
36:25, the energy firm RWE, one of the
36:28planet's largest emitters of carbon
36:30dioxide. His argument was simple and
36:34unsettling at the same time. If the
36:37melting ice is filling his lagoon and
36:39that company contributed to heating the
36:41planet, let them pay their share. He
36:44wasn't asking for a millionaire's
36:46compensation. He was asking for RWE to
36:49cover the percentage of Huaraz's
36:51protection works that corresponded to
36:54their percentage of historical
36:55emissions. A farmer from Ancash with a
37:00German lawyer, calculating what
37:02fraction of a retaining wall in the
37:04Andes a German power company should pay
37:06for. The case lasted 10 years. It
37:12reached oral trial at the Higher
37:14Regional Court of Hamm in March 2025.
37:18On May 28, 2025, the ruling arrived,
37:22and Saúl lost. The court dismissed the
37:26lawsuit with no possibility of appeal.
37:30The judge reasoned that the probability
37:32of the wave reaching his specific house
37:35in the next 30 years was low, but one
37:38part of that ruling changed the rules
37:41of the game, which is why the case is
37:43still studied in law schools. The
37:47German court accepted the underlying
37:49principle. A company can indeed be held
37:53civilly liable for climate damages in
37:55proportion to what it has emitted. In
37:58other words, Saúl lost his case and
38:01opened the door for everyone else. And
38:04so, 84 years later, we return to the
38:08beginning. In 1941, Guaraz was warned.
38:13Scientists told them so. It was
38:16published in the newspapers, and the
38:19news didn't cause a stir. Today, Guaraz
38:22is being warned again. But it is no
38:26longer an expedition rumor; it is
38:28official bathymetry, a report submitted
38:31to the Prime Minister’s office, and a
38:33warning from the Comptroller.
38:37Everything is measured: the cubic
38:39meters, the height of the dam, the
38:41number of people exposed, and the name
38:44of the work that must be done.
38:47Information is no longer missing; the
38:49work is. At the end of this video, one
38:52single question remains, and it is not
38:54about 1941. A warning that no one heeds
38:58is exactly the same as not having
39:00warned at all. Guaraz already learned
39:04that once, and it cost 18 people their
39:07lives. It is still up there. It is
39:11fuller than ever, and the city below is
39:1410 times larger.

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