ARMERO – Martha Lucía López released the boat into the river alongside hundreds of others with the faces of missing children, in one last attempt to find her son, or rather, to pray that he would find her.

Her son, Sergio Melendro, was one of hundreds of children reported missing when a volcanic eruption devastated the Colombian town Armero on Nov. 13, 1985, and whose whereabouts remains unknown.

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“The only option we have is for them, the people who adopted them, to tell the true story and for them (the children) to come to us,” the 67-year-old said.

Approximately 25,000 perished when the Nevado del Ruiz volcano erupted, making it the deadliest natural disaster in Colombia’s recent history and leaving the town in central-western Colombia uninhabited. The ensuing ch

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