Posted on 07/27/2002 2:42:18 PM PDT by Libloather
Fears Rise as Congo Volcano Spews Big Dust Cloud
Sat Jul 27,11:18 AM ET
By Themistocle Hakizimana
GOMA, Congo (Reuters) - A Congolese city half razed by a volcano just six months ago was threatened again on Saturday as a nearby rumbling mountain spewed a massive wall of dust and ash for a second straight day.
Experts said they were worried by a towering three-km (two-mile) plume of dust and ash thrown up by Nyiragongo, a dark cone-shaped mountain looming over Goma, home to 500,000 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo, many of them displaced by war, on the scenic shores of Lake Kivu. A neighboring peak, Nyamuragira, continued to throw lava 600 feet into the air in a dramatic eruption over uninhabited forest as it has done on and off since late Thursday.
"Nyamuragira is spectacular. Everyone should see something like this once in their life," said Dario Tedesco, a volcano consultant to the United Nations, after flying over both peaks in a helicopter.
"But it is Nyiragongo that continues to worry us," he said, reiterating that scientists still had little idea how much pressure was building up inside the mountain.
Nyiragongo razed much of Goma in January in Africa's most destructive volcanic eruption for 25 years. Tens of thousands were forced to flee into neighboring Rwanda, adding to the woes of a region beset by civil war and the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Vulcanologists said the current danger was that rising lava inside Nyiragongo would force a breach in its flanks, not that the lava would overflow the rim of the 0.75-mile-wide crater.
They said the molten rock had risen rapidly inside Nyiragongo in the last two weeks, but it was difficult to assess the risk in the notoriously unpredictable mountain. In 1977, scores of people were killed when a sea of lava burst through fissures in Nyiragongo's flanks at 37 mph, which experts said was the fastest lava flow on record.
Aid workers have prepared emergency items such as makeshift shelters just in case Nyiragongo erupts. Goma's 500,000 residents, however, have remained in the town.
The mountains lie in territory controlled by the Rwandan-backed rebels of the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD), who have been at war for four years with the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo in Kinshasa.
A what?
In fact, I think Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Constipation is drafting her article on this right now.
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To paraphrase an old Sam Kinison joke, if they are so worried about an eruption, why don't they MOVE SOMEPLACE AWAY FROM IT! OHH! OHH OOOOOOHHHHHH!
A "volcano consultant".
You know, he's the guy in charge of distributing condoms to people who are getting f***** by living too close to a volcano.
Let's see now:
If a 747 full of Al-Qaida members crashes into the volcano, that's 350 Al-Qaidas multiplied by 42 virgins per Al-Qaida or a grand total of 14700 virgins.
Will that be enough?
Give...
ME...
MORE...
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