A survivor’s story:
The fiery dragon
that sleeps
My brother Jose and I were playing outside. I looked up and saw something that didn't look real. “Look Jose.” I said and pointed. We were both looking at the biggest cloud of gray smoke we had ever seen. There were flocks of birds flying away from the cloud. We knew it had come from the old volcano. We both ran inside shouting to our grandmother. She didn't even move.
“Oh that old impostor! Don’t you know why it’s called the fiery dragon that sleeps? It’s because it snores but it never wakes up!”
Some people decided to leave the village, mostly on foot. We were lucky enough to have a truck. Our neighbors were poorer than us and didn’t have a truck so we decided that when the time came we would take them with us. It meant we couldn't take as many possessions but we all knew that didn’t matter. Things were getting serious now.
The loudest noise I had ever heard. I think it was morning, although it had been difficult to tell what time of day it was since the volcano had woken and started to churn out thick, dark smoke and ash.
The noise was the volcano throwing out a cloud of ash, miles and miles into the sky. The sky, that had been dark and gray for so long, was lit up by lava exploding from the top of the mountain. That’s when my mom and dad decided to leave. The air started to smell weird and made me choke. My dad gave us all pieces of cloth to wrap around our mouths and noses. We all got in the truck—me, Jose, Grandma, Mom and Dad. Our neighbors got in too with their children. We were all squashed up close together but no one complained. I got very sad when we set off. We had to leave all our animals behind.
It was complete chaos as we left. People were leaving carrying whatever they could. The ash was raining down on everything. Some were carrying sheets of metal over their heads, cardboard if they couldn't find metal. You couldn't really hear noises properly. The ash made everything sound muffled. I do remember hearing lots of crying. I thought it was children but when I looked over and saw my mum crying I realized that the adults were just as scared as we were.
The windshield wipers couldn't keep up with the speed the ash was falling. Pieces of rock were now falling from the sky. I assumed the fiery dragon was throwing them down upon us! I don’t know if my Dad knew where we were going, nothing was recognizable. We just followed whatever tail lights we could see.
The ash just kept falling. The roofs of the houses were caving in under the weight. The dragon kept grumbling.
We did eventually reach some kind of shelter. After a couple of days, the volcano breathed out one last dragon’s breath of ash and went back to sleep.
We returned after a couple of months to our village. We looked for our house but there was nothing left. I started crying when I realized all our animals were probably dead. Some of the other families came back but not all.
Explore Earthquakes
