Facebook appeal reunites sisters separated in volcano disaster 30 years ago

Two sisters separated as young children after an avalanche destroyed their home town in Colombia have been reunited three decades later. Jaqueline Vasquez Sanchez found younger sister Lorena after she watched a video on Facebook made by a foundation which seeks to bring families back together. It featured Lorena appealing for information about family members who might have survived the Nevado del Ruiz volcano eruption which engulfed the town of Armero in November 1985. She got in touch with the foundation and organised the meeting after DNA tests proved they were siblings.

I have to catch up with 30 years of her life and she has to do the same with me.

Lorena Sanchez

The sisters were aged three and nine when the volcano erupted, sending a river of mud and rocks over their town, killing 20,000 people. The authorities, who had been caring for them separately, thought they had been orphaned and put the sisters up for adoption. Now, the two women, now aged 33 and 39 and with children of their own, have met for the first time since the disaster. "It was beautiful and sad because it’s been 30 years since the tragedy that I’ve come to find out what happened to my sister,“ said Lorena.

It’s something that you find within this: joy, I wonder if she will love me. It’s difficult, it’s difficult to explain this moment.

Jaqueline Sanchez

volcano sisters