Times Insider delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how news, features and opinion come together at The New York Times.

On June 3, Volcán de Fuego in Guatemala erupted, sending burning lava, rocks and gas surging down the slopes toward the communities at the volcano’s base. The village of San Miguel Los Lotes was swallowed by the volcano’s pyroclastic flow — a current of gases, sand, ash, rocks and tree trunks. More than 150 people are dead and 197 are still missing, many of whom are believed to be entombed in the debris left in the disaster’s wake.

Cellphone video shot by bystanders and local news media on the scene captured the pyroclastic flow rapidly engulfing the landscape.

I work on a team that focuses on immersive storytelling using augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). My colleagues and I recognized an opportunity to convey the scale of this natural disaster in a new way, to bring our readers closer to the story by placing them at the scene and allowing them to examine it as if they were there.