Galeras

Galeras was designated one of only 16 Decade Volcanoes worldwide by the United Nations in 1991, recognizing its extreme danger to nearby populations.

The January 14, 1993, eruption killed nine people — six volcanologists and three tourists — during an international scientific workshop, fundamentally changing volcanic fieldwork safety protocols.

Pasto, Colombia's 17th-largest city with ~450,000 residents, lies just 8 km east of the active summit crater — one of the closest city-to-crater distances of any major city in the world.

Galeras has erupted 42 times in its recorded history, including 15 eruptions in the 25-year period from 1989 to 2014.

The volcano's westward-breached caldera was formed by at least three catastrophic edifice collapses over the past million years.

Stanley Williams, an American geophysicist who survived the 1993 eruption with severe injuries, wrote the bestselling account Surviving Galeras about the disaster.

Galeras's Vulcanian eruption style — sudden, violent explosions with minimal precursory warning — makes it exceptionally difficult to predict.

The Colombian government ordered mandatory evacuations of up to 9,000 people during the 2004–2008 eruption sequence, though some residents refused to leave.

Geoffrey Brown, the British volcanologist killed in 1993, had spent years studying Galeras and was considered one of the world's leading experts on the volcano.

Galeras has been active for more than 1 million years, making it one of the longest-lived volcanic centers in the northern Andes.

The volcano's name comes from the Spanish word for 'galley,' as colonial settlers thought the mountain resembled an overturned ship.

During the 2007 VEI 3 eruption, volcanic ash rained on Pasto's streets, closing schools and markets and causing respiratory health alerts across the city.