In his 1980 novel The Fog, Stephen King tells how a thick fog quickly spreads across the small town of Bridgeton, Maine. Numerous deadly creatures lurk within the dense cloud, attacking anyone who dares to enter the area. Six years after King wrote about the deadly cloud, the imagined horrors became reality when the Lake Nyos disaster occurred.It will be the most destructive natural disaster in Cameroon’s history.
Nature had warned of what might happen. Two years before the disaster, a truck with twelve passengers was driving along the road bordering Lake Monoun near Lake Nyos. After a loud roar came from the water, a thick fog began to spread quickly across the forested area. Although the car was now shrouded in clouds, the driver was not worried as it was a fairly common weather phenomenon in the area.. It was until his vehicle stopped working that it seemed to have broken down.
Two passengers saw everything from the roof of the car. The other passengers got out of the truck one by one to see what was happening. Heading to the front, they began to fall one by one until they were silently on the ground. In a state of shock, the two surviving passengers watched as animals and insects died around them.They were faced with an apocalyptic event without any idea of its cause. That day, 37 people would die, as well as hundreds of cattle and other animals.
A horrific disaster
Because there were so few survivors, reports of what happened at Lake Monoun were scant and contradictory. Authorities chose to dismiss the incident as an unexplained anomaly. It was said to be a strange fog, with an unpleasant smell, that seemed to crawl along the ground, not rising higher than two meters. That is why the two passengers on the roof of the truck remained physically unharmed. No one expected that such a terrible event would happen again two years later and in a place where it could be much more deadly..
Early in the morning of August 21, 1986, while most people living around Lake Nyos were asleep, a loud roar could be heard from the water. To an observer, the lake seemed to be boiling, and the reaction was creating a thick fog that was spreading across the surface. Slowly, the wind began to blow the cloud toward the city. Halima Sulei was awakened by the terrible noise, but the next thing she heard would be much worse. His house seemed to be surrounded by ghosts, moaning, wailing, crying.. In fact, it was their neighbors who were already suffocating from this deadly fog. In horror, her body suddenly stopped responding, Halima lost consciousness.
When Halima Suley woke up, the sun had already risen. Remembering his strange night experience, he went to check on his daughters and found their four corpses. Desperate, she went to seek help, but found only more horrors. It wasn’t just his family that suffered: all his neighbors lay silently on the ground, motionless.. She couldn’t stop screaming and crying until another survivor, Ephriam Che, ran into her. Ephriam had spent the night in his house on the hill and in the morning he walked down to the city, passing Lake Nyos. He found it strange that the waters were red, although they are usually brown. When she met Halima, she said: “Ephriam! Come here! Why are these people lying here? Why aren’t they moving again?” Ephriam would have to face the painful reality that his entire family had perished in the disaster.
Why did the Lake Nyos disaster happen?
Many conspiracies arose to try to explain the disaster. Divine punishment? Chemical weapons? A government experiment gone wrong? Rumors fought to provide some peace to the population after such a scandalous event.
It turned out that both lakes were located on the same volcanic field, which produced large amounts of magma, releasing carbon dioxide. After each incident, investigators found large amounts of carbon dioxide in the water. Thus, they were able to conclude that over many years this chemical had been concentrated at the bottom of these lakes, turning them into potential boilers.. With no mechanism to release this gas, Lake Monoun and Lake Nyos were ticking time bombs. It only took a small change in the water to cause an explosion. When this happened, all the accumulated gas was released, suffocating more than 1,700 people and thousands of animals. The discoloration of the water was also a result of the release of large amounts of CO2.
Today, both lakes have been tamed by a gas release mechanism. Carbon dioxide is released from time to time through pipes from the depths of the lakes.. But Lake Kivu still poses an alarming risk. It is so huge that gas release mechanisms are not enough to prevent a catastrophic explosion. Two million people live around the lake, which has been nicknamed the “sleeping giant.”
Source: Hiper Textual
