1994 : ZAIRE |
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Following the unspeakable butchery in Rwanda in 1994, more than a million
frightened refugees fled across borders to Zaire. Most of these people were
restricted to unclaimed, barren land on the slopes of the volcanoes
NYAMURAGIRA
and
NYIRAGONGO, where people somehow managed to set up tiny
"homes" on jagged a'a lava flows too rough for easy walking. No sooner had
these wretched people arrived, however, when both volcanoes began to erupt.
Nyiragongo is characterized by extremely fluid, fast-moving lava flows, and
the last flank eruption (1977) had killed several hundred people. The
threat to refugees and international aid efforts was thus extremely serious,
and Tom Casadevall and I were sent by the USGS and the USAID Office of
Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) to evaluate the situation, along with
colleagues from France and Japan. Although the Nyamuragira eruption had
ended and Nyiragongo was quiet when we arrived, the latter volcano soon
roared back into activity. Fortunately, the threat posed by this eruption
was less of a threat than was illness and politics, and our team concluded
that increased monitoring of these volcanoes was adequate for the time
being. Local violence has since made these efforts impossible...... |
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