San Miguel los Lotes, Guatemala
Volcanic eruption: At least 75 people were killed and entire towns left covered in ash after Guatemala’s Fuego Volcano suddenly erupted this week. Houses in the village of San Miguel los Lotes were turned to rubble by the force of the blast. “My mother’s house was buried with my entire family inside,” one resident told CNN. “My three sons, two daughters, and my grandson. My mother, my sisters, my nieces and nephews.” Days after the eruption, the ground was so hot that it burned through firefighters’ boots, and rescue workers couldn’t breathe in the smoky, ashy air. Unlike the slow-moving Kilauea lava eruption in Hawaii, Fuego unleashed a deadly pyroclastic flow—a mix of ash, rock, and volcanic gases that races down a volcano’s slopes at hundreds of miles per hour, far too fast for people to escape.