Lake Kills 1,746 People And 3,000 Animals All In The Same Day, And It’s Likely Not The End
A freak of nature occurred back on August 21, 1986. And it killed 1,746 people and 3,000 animals. A cloud of carbon dioxide erupted from Lake Nyos near the border of Nigeria in Cameroon. The poison gas descended from the high elevation of the lake and down into the valley. But in the valley, people lived. As the poison gas descended upon their homes, it pushed out all the oxygen. And these people suffocated to death.
A freak of nature occurred back n August 21, 1986. And it killed 1,746 people and 3,000 animals. A cloud of carbon dioxide erupted from Lake Nyos near the border of Nigeria in Cameroon. The poison gas descended from the high elevation of the lake and down into the valley. But in the valley, people lived. As the poison gas descended upon their homes, it pushed out all the oxygen. And these people suffocated to death. 1,746 people and 3,000 animals. A cloud of carbon dioxide erupted from Lake Nyos near the border of Nigeria in Cameroon. The poison gas descended from the high elevation of the lake and down into the valley. But in the valley, people lived. As the poison gas descended upon their homes, it pushed out all the oxygen. And these people suffocated to death.
If you feel like this could be the plot point to the next Stephen King novel, you’re not alone. But this really happened and had deadly consequences.
But the reason that this lake burps up poison gas dates back four centuries. Then a hydrovolcanic eruption ripped a crater into Lake Nyos. And over the centuries, vast pools of carbon dioxide have been collecting, just waiting for the right circumstances to leave the safety of the water and ravage the human population nearby.
As more gas seeped into the groundwater, the phenomenon created “CO2-charged soda springs” that slowly, and imperceptibly, trickled into Lake Nyos. Dr. George Kling, a professor of biology, from the University of Michigan has been studying it for years.
As this CO2 built up, so did the pressure. Kling says the lake houses so much pressure, and it is like a shaken bottle of your favorite “soda.”
But the water on top of the carbon dioxide pools is heavy. This pressure forces the gas to do one of two things. It can either disperse, or it can stay put.
If the cap of the water is removed, the poisonous gas will erupt from the lake like a fizzing bottle of Sprite.
This massive pressure release is much easier to trigger than you’d think. A heavy rain or a distant earthquake can perturb the gas enough to cause the deadly eruption.
For Lake Nyos back in the 1980s, a few boulders probably did the deed. That and some dirt.
Kling found evidence that a “very large and recent landslide” caused the pressurized carbon dioxide under the water to erupt and then descend like a cloud of death onto the townspeople in the valley below.
Besides the landslides, groundwater and disaster-management expert Dr. Njilah Isaac Konfor from the University of Yaounde in Cameroon confirmed that it rained for a week before the deadly incident.
Scientists know about only three lakes in the world that have this deadly property. And only two have “belched” up their poisonous reserve of carbon dioxide in recorded history.
Lake Monoun, which is also in Cameroon, is just 19 miles from Lake Nyos. It’s carbon dioxide released about two years before Lake Nyos’s. It was small but still killed 37 people.
Kling claims that researchers are looking for ways to clear the carbon dioxide before it kills people. But Dr. Greg Tanyileke from the Cameroonian Institute for Geological and Mining Research thinks that is “unlikely.” He is the chief government scientist working on Lake Nyos and suspects another deadly eruption will come soon.
The third lake with this deadly property is Lake Kivu, which is in central Africa on the border of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo