Model Sheds Light on a Tragedy and a New Type of Eruption
MAY 01, 1996
Ten years after a natural disaster in Cameroon killed 1746 people, a new model adds support to the hypothesis that the culprit was a previously unknown type of nonvolcanic eruption.
DOI: 10.1063/1.2807610
For severed hours on the night of 21 August 1986, a massive jet of gas and water erupted from Lake Nyos, a remote, deep volcanic lake in the uplands of northwestern Cameroon in West‐Central Africa. Reaching a height of over 100 meters, the heavy, lethal gas displaced the air below it and swept down the slope, asphyxiating 1746 people in the villages below the lake.
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© 1996 American Institute of Physics
