Mud Slide Survivor Rescued as Food Supply Gives Out

--A 75-year-old woman with enough rice and cocoa for one more meal was ordered to leave her home in Armero--24 days after most of the Colombian city was buried beneath a mud slide triggered by an erupting volcano, authorities said. Maria Rosa Echeverri survived 24 days on food given her before the town was devastated Nov. 13 and was down to one more meal when found last Saturday, Maj. Rafael Horacio Ruiz Navarro said. “We were ending an operation authorizing the owners of the few houses left standing to take out their things,” Ruiz Navarro said in a radio interview. A neighbor went to his home and realized there was smoke coming out of the next house. He found a disoriented 75-year-old woman with very poor eyesight making a meal, he said. The woman told reporters that she had tried several times to leave but was forced to go back when she found mud all around her shack. Ruiz Navarro said the woman’s poor eyesight probably explained why she never found a passage across the sea of mud that buried the town. The woman was placed under medical care and is in good condition. About 25,000 people were killed when the Nevado del Ruiz volcano erupted 100 miles west of Bogota, melting its snow-shrouded cap and sending floodwaters and mud raging down its slopes. Most of Armero was buried.

--Two months after she underwent open heart surgery, singer Peggy Lee left a New Orleans hospital and boarded a private jet to return to California. “Miss Lee’s spirits have remained indomitable throughout this lengthy and tedious hospital confinement and her condition has improved steadily” since she fell sick last Oct. 6, said Dr. Tom Oelsner, her physician at Touro Infirmary. He has said the 65-year-old singer should be able to return to the stage once she recuperates. Lee will stay for a while at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, monitored by her personal physician, Oelsner said. Before Lee left the city, she stopped at WWIW, a radio station that plays jazz and easy listening music, and thanked the announcer and her fans.

--Three alley cats have become roof cats since going on sentry duty 24 hours a day at the Hardin County Courthouse in Elizabethtown, Ky. The cats were rescued from an animal shelter a month ago and taken to the roof. They keep the area below clear of pigeons that had been making their presence known in an unpleasant way to people entering the courthouse. “They just love it,” said Magistrate G.C. Ray, who had the idea and bought an automatic feeder, water dishes and litter box for the kitty patrol. To avoid rooftop romance, only cats of the same sex were recruited. “The current group is an all-girl orchestra,” Ray said. Eight pigeon carcasses have been retrieved from the roof and other pigeons apparently are roosting elsewhere, Ray said.