Victims fear return home

Press, 30 August 1986, Page 10

Victims fear return home

NZPA-Reuter Woum Survivors haunted by a volcanic explosion that killed 1500 people huddled in ill-equipped hospitals in north-west Cameroon yesterday, fear they will be victims of another explosion if they return home. "I will wait to see what the scientists and Government say about whether I can go home,” said Ephraim Khimbi, a 30-year-old agriculture official from Souboum, one of the three villages whose population was almost wiped out by the explosion last week. “I don’t understand about this gas. Can it happen again and will we all die?” His question is one French and American volcano experts are trying to answer. They have already taken water samples from Lake Nios, a once-blue volcanic lake that turned a murky brown after unleashing the gases that killed; 1500 people.

“The neighbours up on the hill saw a flame come up from the lake and then a cloud with vapour came over the hill,” said Francis Khimbi, a worker who was away from his home in Nios when the explosion occurred.

His wife, Veronica, aged 27, who suffered facial bums from the fumes, is one of four people in the village who survived. She found their five children dead after regaining consciousness

the morning after the explosion. She said she woke up in the middle of the night coughing and ran outside after trying to rouse her children. She fell in the road on her way to a neighbour’s house and passed out for hours. “I don’t know whether we will go back to the village to live," said her husband. “We won’t go back to the same house. If we go back it will be to the older part of the village in the hills.” The villagers are painfully aware that the lethal gas descended on villages nestled in the valley of the lush region, leaving villages in the hills above far less affected. Local authorities estimate that 3000 people have fled their homes. Many are staying with relatives but about 500 are crammed into hospitals.

In Woum district hospital, women suckle their children while seated on the dusty floors of smelly wards. Some try to maintain a semblance of hygiene by spreading their washed laundry on the grass around the barrackstyle hospital. But heavy tropical downpours drench the clothes so they never dry. The Army has been discouraging survivors from returning to their villages, where the water is still contaminated and thousands of asphyxiated cattle litter the mountain slopes.