On the shores of Lake Nyos, a crater lake from a dormant volcano close to Cameroon’s western border, something horrific occurred in 1986. Investigators arrived to discover dreadful things had transpired after hearing rumors of a weird illness sweeping individuals who lived on the shoreline.
Nearly every resident of four entire villages on the beach had been wiped off. Around 1,800 people had died as a result of whatever had happened at Lake Nyos. What had happened here?
It’s almost unbelievable how much some parts of the government and municipal authorities had anticipated this. People who resided at the neighboring Lake Monoun perished abruptly under similar circumstances two years earlier, in 1984. The people of Lake Nyos, however, were not informed of the tragedy and it was kept secret from the general public.
About 231 kilometers (144 miles) separate Lake Monoun from Lake Nyos. Many of the nearby communities were unaware that many people had died because the area is generally not serviced by electricity or any type of telecommunication. The residents in the area around Lake Nyos had no idea what lay ahead of them.
The Lake Nyos Disaster
Around 9:30 pm on the evening of August 21st 1986, a rumbling noise was heard coming from the lake for approximately 20 seconds. Suddenly a huge blast of poor-smelling air swept the local area, pushing towards the village of Lower Nyos.
Few were able to escape the devastating blast despite several attempts to flee the cloud, and only one mother and her child were later discovered alive in Lower Nyos. However, it didn’t end there; neighbouring villages Cha Subum and Fang also lost almost 500 residents. Every animal the cloud encountered, down to the smallest insects, was also obliterated.
Lake Nyos (Jack Lockwood / Public Domain)
A man from the village of Wum set out on a bicycle for the town of Nyos early on August 22. He was traveling as normal when he came across a dead antelope in the road that had no marks on it and appeared to be waiting for him. The man fastened it to his bicycle and continued on his journey since he doesn’t believe in turning down a free gift.
Further down the road, he found a dog and two rats near the side of the road, both of which were dead. When he was questioned afterward, he said he believed perhaps a lightning bolt had struck the region.
It didn’t take him long to come across some huts, but he was unable to enter any of them. There was not a single person alive everywhere because they had all also been killed. The man was so shocked that he returned to his own village immediately.
The Aftermath
The few disaster survivors had started to return to Wum when he got back to the settlement, he saw. A lot of them told tales of hearing a loud explosion or rumbling sound before smelling horrible smells. After that, they passed out and eventually awoke to find everyone around them dead.
It took more than two days for any rescue services to reach Wum and Lake Nyos because they are in rural areas of Cameroon. In order to investigate this bizarre occurrence, local officials called the governor.
On their way to Wum, the medics learned that the calamity had not only struck the nearby community but had also claimed the lives of over 1,800 additional people and roughly 3,000 farm animals. The innumerable wild creatures and insects that also dotted the roadways and surrounding terrain for miles around were not counted in this horrible death toll.
Officially, 1,746 people died in the incident was recorded. This was simply an approximation since many of the survivors had left the community into the forest and had already started burying their relatives and neighbors in mass graves before the counting had even started. The fact that the disaster’s origin had vanished completely without leaving any evidence was its most horrifying element.
The Investigation
Scientists from all around the world started to investigate as soon as the accident became known to the wider world. Since Cameroon was formerly a French territory, scientists from the USA and France were the main contributors.
They observed that the remains showed no signs of bleeding, physical trauma, or disease. The victims didn’t even appear to be in pain; rather, they appeared to have passed out and ceased breathing.
It’s significant to note that the disaster’s victims were all located within 19 kilometres (or 12 miles) of Lake Nyos. Locals believed that it was known as a “bad lake” and that evil spirits were said to have emerged from it to slay those who lived nearby. The scientists observed an upsurge in mortality as they neared the lake. The odds of survival were higher for those who were farthest away. What was even more telling was that the blue hue of the lake was changed to a deep red.
The red color of the water was brought on by dissolved iron, which is often found near the lake’s bottom, the researchers found after examining samples of the water. They also found that the water contained a significant amount of carbon dioxide (CO2). The levels grew steadily higher as they took samples from deeper into the lake. To prevent harm from the CO2 levels, they had to switch to pressurized containers when they descended 180 meters (600 feet).
An artificial gas vent in Lake Nyos, installed to prevent a buildup of CO2 and a repeat of the disaster (Gio la Gamb / CC BY-SA 3.0)
Carbon dioxide gas is deadly if it fills a sufficient area, starving those who are trapped with it of oxygen and causing them to suffocate. The researchers came to the conclusion that the gas had been released due to a minor volcanic explosion beneath the lake’s bed.
They also came to the conclusion that the cloud would have hugged the earth and been around 160 feet (50 meters) thick, enough to cover the area for kilometers around in the lethal gas. This was based on the CO2 levels observed and the size of the lake. Those who were affected were choked to death.
Never Again?
Since then, the CO2 levels in the lake have been continuously measured due to the unfathomably huge number of fatalities caused by this catastrophe. Degassing tubes have also been built by scientists to stop a repeat of the same catastrophe. The rates of degassing have steadied since 2019 and the lake seems to have reached equilibrium.
As well as this, there have been further investigations to see if this phenomenon could happen elsewhere. In 2005, Lake Kivu in the Congo was found also to have high levels of CO2. This lake is massive, some 2,000 times larger than Lake Nyos. Could something similar happen there, or elsewhere, killing far more than before?
