Cameroon buries victims of eruption

Press, 28 August 1986, Page 10

Cameroon buries victims of eruption

NZPA-Reuter Souboum

Soldiers and convicts wearing bandanas against the smell of death continued burying the victims of gas that erupted from ah underwater volcano and killed an estimated 1500 people in Cameroon. Only one woman and a child are known to have survived the gas explosion on Thursday near the village of Nios, a remote Settlement, which had a population of 700 in the last census in 1966. Hundreds more died in nearby Cha and Souboum.

General James Tataw, in charge of the disaster area, said he expected heavy equipment to arrive today to allow his men to begin digging graves for rotting animal carcases, which could cause an epidemic . if not buried quickly.

Hundreds of bloated white cattle, asphyxiated by the gas, were scattered on the gentle grass slopes of the lush village of tinroofed houses and thatched huts. A French volcano expert, Francois Le Guern, head of a team that flew to Cameroon to give advice, said it was the most disastrous underwater volcano explosion he could recall.

A similar eruption in the late 1970 s in Indonesia killed 142 people and an explosion in Cameroon two years ago killed several dozen.

Some 300 people are in hospital and up to 200 were moved from the area around Lake Nios, known until the disaster struck as “Good Lake,” for its unusually clear water.

Now the lake, about

I.skm long arid wide, looks from a helicopter like a muddy, rusty coloured marsh sunk in a crater.

General Tataw said he believed an estimated 1500 people had died in a radius of about 15km and that the clean-up would take another 10 days.

“Most of the corpses have been buried. Thqy were buried in mass graves because we don’t have enough labourers for individual graves,” he said.

The gas had dissipated in wind and water in the first 24 hours after the explosion, but the villages’ water supply and fresh produce were still contaminated.

A survivor, Chai David Wambong, a farmer from Souboum who returned to the remote village in

search of food for his wife, who is in hospital, said he had been at home when the volcano erupted.

“We felt warm and I felt like I was drunk . . . the smell was like cooking with kitchen gas,” he said. He found his family sprawled on the ground and he was paralysed on one side of his body but managed to drag one son into the house.

Despite his efforts, two of his sons and a brother died. Asked whether he would return to his home when it was safe,; Mr Wambong said, “It depends on if my friends return. Wherever I go, I feel that death will follow me.”

Members of the French scientific team headed by Dr Le Guern said the victims had probably been asphyxiated by carbon dioxide or hydrogen sul-

fide gas, but they had not managed to get to the village for an on-the-spot Doctor Le Guern, from France’s National Centre for Scientific Research, said carbon dioxide had killed almost instantly. A local official, Gideon Taka, said he was one of the first to get to the scene of the disaster, almost two days after it occurred.

“When we arrived, we mostly found people in their yards, where they had tried to flee, most of them naked or half-naked from trying to rip off their clothes against the heat.”

He said the volcano erupted on Thursday night (local time) but its disastrous effects only became known to him after a Government employee

drove his motor-cycle near Nios the next day and spotted a dead antelope. Thinking the animal had been left by a hunter, he tried to haul it on to his motor-cycle. He became dizzy and collapsed, apparently from fumes lingering around the animal, He went and reported the incident to the authorities. ® Israel and Cameroon restored relations on Thursday after a 13-year break.

Israel has placed great importance on restoring diplomatic relations with Cameroon, one of 29 African countries that severed ties with the Jewish State during » the Middle East war of 1973. Six Israel doctors and 10 assistants rushed to Mount Nios to aid survivors.