Mount Nyiragongo, located in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, January 17, 2002, ejecting a large cloud of smoke and ash high into the sky and spewing lava down three sides of the volcano. Mount Nyiragongo is located roughly 10 km (6 miles) north of the town of Goma, near the Congo's border with Rwanda. One river of lava headed straight toward Goma, where international aid teams were evacuating residents. The lava flows burned through large swaths of the surrounding jungle and destroyed dozens of homes. This false-color image was acquired January 17, 2002 by the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) roughly 5 hours after the eruption began. Notice Mount Nyiragongo's large plume (bright white) can be seen streaming westward in this scene. The plume appears to be higher than the immediately adjacent clouds and so it is colder in temperature, making it easy for MODIS to distinguish the volcanic plume from the clouds by using image bands sensitive to thermal radiation.
The news from The Congo, where I spent three years as a Peace Corps Volunteer, continues to depress. Two earthquakes struck hours apart in Rwanda and the neighboring Congo on Sunday. At least 39 people were killed and hundreds of others injured in Rwanda. Some of the victims died when the church they were attending collapsed. Across the border in the lakeside city of Bukavu, five people were killed and 149 wounded. Many homes, as well as schools and churches, were damaged in the city but the extent was not immediately clear. The area where the quakes hit is part of Africa’s Great Rift Valley, which includes a seismically active fault line.
Mount Nyiragongo erupted in the Democratic Republic of Congo in January 2002. Molten lava plunged down the hillside and poured into nearby Lake Kivu. Many died, and much of the city of Goma was destroyed. In fact, the local people were lucky. Had the eruption spread to one of the many volcanic faults under Lake Kivu, it could have unleashed one of the most terrifying of all natural phenomena - lake overturn.
A limnic eruption, also referred to as a lake overturn or exploding lake, is a rare type of natural disaster in which CO2 suddenly erupts from deep lake water, posing the threat of suffocating wildlife, livestock and humans. Such an eruption may also cause tsunamis in the lake as the rising CO2 displaces water. Scientists believe landslides, volcanic activity, or explosions can trigger such an eruption..
In 1986, the tragedy of Lake Nyos, in Cameroon, made headlines around the world when almost 1,800 people sleeping in houses around the lake suffocated in their sleep. The team of scientists that went to investigate concluded that carbon dioxide, trapped at the bottom of the lake, had suddenly risen to the surface, killing everything within 25km. They called their theory lake overturn.
Eventually the scientists came to realize that carbon dioxide springs underground were pumping carbon dioxide into the lake and that the whole tragedy would be repeated if nothing was done. They installed an extraordinary fountain in the middle of the lake to help the gas disperse. Even so, the level of carbon dioxide in the waters remains a concern.
The Nyos disaster promoted a survey of deep lakes in Africa and Indonesia to see where else lake overturn could happen. All seem to be safe, except one - Lake Kivu, in Rwanda. Lake Kivu is one of the largest and deepest lakes in Africa and two million people live around its shore. It is also filling up with carbon dioxide, although it's not yet saturated with the deadly gas. The only thing that could trigger a gas release would be a massive geological event. Lake Kivu is sitting in an earthquake zone and surrounded by active volcanoes, including Mount Nyiragongo. If an eruption or an earthquake was to happen under the lake, then the effect could release millions of tons of asphyxiating gas into the surrounding areas. Until a solution is found, millions of lives could be at risk.
I trained for three months on the shores of Lake Kivu, learning French and teaching methodologies. Each day I would swim across the lake- I was in much better condition - Ah youth! I knew that the citizens of the country, then called the Republic of Zaire, suffered: malnutrition disease and tribal atrocities were daily realities. Never could I have imagined that the lake itself could pose a threat.
For more on the Congo read: Cowboys with cell phones
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