After the lahar demolished her home, Sánchez was trapped beneath the debris of her house, where she remained in water for three days, as rescue workers did not have any way to render life-saving medical care if they amputated her hopelessly pinned legs.

At 9:09 pm of that evening, pyroclastic flows exploding from the crater melted the mountain's icecap, forming lahars which cascaded into river valleys below.

[3] Loss of life was exacerbated by the authorities' failure to take costly preventive measures in the absence of clear signs of imminent danger.

A hazard map was prepared in October;[nb 1] it highlighted the danger from falling ash and rock near Murillo, Santa Isabel, and Líbano, as well as the threat of lahars in Mariquita, Guayabal, Chinchiná, and Armero.

[6] Henry Villegas of the Colombian Institute of Mining and Geology stated that the maps clearly demonstrated Armero would be affected by the lahars, but were "met with strong opposition from economic interests".

[8] The Colombian Congress criticised scientific and civil defense agencies for scaremongering, and the government and army were preoccupied with a guerrilla campaign in Bogotá, the national capital.

[18] On the night of the disaster, Omayra and her family were awake, worrying about the ashfall from the eruption, when they heard the sound of an approaching lahar.

When rescue teams tried to help her, they realized that her legs were trapped under her house's roof with her dead aunt's arms tightly clutched around her.

Once the girl was freed from the waist up, her rescuers attempted to pull her out, but found the task impossible without breaking her legs in the process.

Each time a person pulled her, the water pooled around her, rising so that it seemed she would drown if they let her go, so rescue workers placed a tire around her body to keep her afloat.

Her face, her words, and her courage, which streamed throughout the world on television and were a heartbreaking image in the largest newspapers and magazines of the United States and Europe, remained a testimony of accusation against those who could have at the very least made the tragedy less serious.

"[16][17] As the public became aware of Sánchez's situation through the media, her death became used as a symbol of the failure of officials to properly assist victims who allegedly could have been saved.

[26] The Armero catastrophe happened soon after the M-19 guerrilla group's raid and subsequent Palace of Justice siege on November 6, worsening an already chaotic situation.

After Sánchez's death, the Colombian government was blamed for its inaction and general indifference to warning signs prior to the volcano's eruption.

[31] For example, a punk rock band formed in Chile in 2008 named themselves Omayra Sánchez; they express their "discontent that they feel with the negligence on the part of the people who in this day and age run the world".

[20] Adiós, Omayra: La catástrofe de Armero (1988), written by Eduardo Santa as a response to the eruption, depicts the girl's last days of life in detail and cites her in its introduction as an eternal symbol of the catastrophe.

[20] In No Morirás (1994), Germán Santa María Barragán writes that of all the horrors he saw at Armero, nothing was more painful than seeing the face of Omayra Sánchez under the ruins of her house.

[18] Isabel Allende's short story, "And of Clay Are We Created" ("De barro estamos hechos"), is told from the perspective of a reporter who tries to help a girl trapped under the fireplace of her ruined home.