The morning after. (Photo by Moses Sawasawa / AFP)
Welcome to the “Rant Edition of Volcanocafé”, tonights special: Carl Erupts.
For a decade I have talked about the need for increased monitoring of African volcanoes. It is if nothing else, rather ridiculous that the volcanoes in Antarctica are far better monitored than African volcanoes bordered by large cities.
Yesterday this came very close to causing a large disaster with international implications. Let us talk about that from a slightly more personal angle.
As the eruption started at Nyiragongo yesterday it was news that filled me with quite a bit of trepidation since I have been to Goma several times, and I have a personal history with the airport in question.
What makes Nyiragongo so dangerous is that the main rift goes towards the city of Goma through the suburbs, that in combination with the unusually fluid lava is a recipe for disaster. Flank eruptions in the area are common, the last one prior to this one was in 2002.
During the 2002 eruption 245 people died and 120 000 people became homeless. During the eruption the airport was overrun by lava.
2021 Eruption
Lava crushing houses in Goma. Photograph borrowed from the Guardian.
Yesterday (Saturday) a new similar flank eruption started that quickly enveloped the suburbs, cut the main road to Beni, and overran the airport once again.
Evacuation orders was quickly issued, but how well that worked is still to be seen as we are still waiting for official numbers of the dead and displaced people.
Goma Volcanic Observatory
After the 2002 eruption a local volcanic Observatory was opened to monitor the volcano and to try to forecast future eruptions. The observatory was under-staffed with scientists, and lacked needed equipment beyond the most rudimentary.
Still, it was as well run as possible, and did what they could to keep everyone safe in the area. In 2020 the World Bank pulled out, and that left the Observatory even more strapped for cash.
Leaving a very unusual set of dangerous volcanoes under-monitored and under-funded, and that is bordering large cities, is bad to begin with, but pulling the funding believing that a war-torn and broken-down country can carry the burden on its own is just another way to say, “we don’t give a shit if you die”.
I am so mad that I am farting flames. We are talking about potentially tens of thousands of lives that could be saved by a very small amount of money.
The Airport
Goma International Airport 2002 Eruption. Photograph by Guido Potters.
As soon as I heard the news I was thrown back in time, my nostrils filled with the memory of the scents from the tarmac and the surrounding vegetation at night. I remembered the stars shining above my head, and all the lovely local people that I met there.
I remembered this in 2002 when I heard the news of the airport having been overrun, and I later returned and saw the airport tarmac being covered in lava where I had stood 2 years earlier.
As I flew in a couple of more times in the intervening years, I saw how the airstrip was slowly restored from the lava, and what it took for the poor province to make the airport be what it once was.
Yesterday those memories came back, but now I have a new memory. A memory I did not expect to have, and that I did not want to have.
I got asked by two different pilots for information if it was safe to land in Goma. They did not ask for themselves, but they asked for colleagues enroute to Goma. The reason was simple, Toulouse VAAC that is responsible for issuing a VONA, the ash advisories, had not done their job.
Here’s the thing. Yes, I am a geophysicist. Yes, I sort of part-time work with volcanoes, and yes, I do like to dabble with forecasting volcanic eruption and jabber about it on Volcanocafé. I am even pretty good at it.
Normally this is done against a backdrop of professional agencies like the Icelandic Met Office, INGV, OVSICORI, Phivolcs, or the Indonesian authorities (that are really kick arse good). And I am always careful in stating that they are the final word on things.
Because it is one thing being a professional armchair volcanologist, and sitting in the hot seat of an agency when the shit hits the fan. I have never wanted to do that, and I have the utmost respect for my friends who do it.
Yesterday my arse got planted in that hot seat. I had basically to on the fly come up with a safety instruction for pilots flying into Goma due to the lack of Toulouse VAAC ash advisories.
All I could give them was generalized bullshit safety advice based on going around the volcano at distance and do a visual inspection of the runway before attempting to land. I hated doing it, and thankfully the local airport authority closed the place down shortly thereafter.
Hours later Toulouse VAAC issued an ash advisory, but by then the airport was overrun by lava and the eruption was winding down.
Conclusion
Goma International Airport with Nyiragongo in the background. Photograph by Alexei Shevelev.
Professional pilots should not have to turn to armchair volcanologists for this. I guess that I was the best bet, and I am sort of thankful for the questions, but still… yesterday there was lives on the line in airplanes flying into Goma.
First of all, there must be more money made available for monitoring of African volcanoes. In this day and age there is just one single entity with the available money, and at least a moderate will to do it, and that is the European Union.
So, if you are of the European persuasion, I urge you to write to your Parliamentarian and tell them to get going on the cheque writing thing.
If you are not a European, I urge you to write and make a fuss anyway, all things will be an improvement.
And last, but not least, if you are contemplating making your way into volcanology, or you are about to start your Ph.D. studies, pick an African volcanology and do your studies on it. The world does not need yet another pointless paper on Yellowstone et Ilk, it needs research on the volcanoes in Africa, and God only knows that there are monsters to study there aplenty.
Anyway, Africa needs a pan-African VAAC to issue VONAs, it needs a good backbone of Volcanic Observatories, at least for the more dangerous volcanoes (yes, I can provide a list) and it bloody well needed it yesterday.
CARL “GRUMPY” REHNBERG
Scary stuff. Do we know why it took so long for Toulouse to issue the VONA? Is the issue that there were not enough resources locally (e.g. due to funding cuts? and/ or lack of protocols?).
Here is the VONA. Note: the information source is given as satellite and Twitter.
Source: http://vaac.meteo.fr/advisory/2021/223030_20210522210202/223030_20210522210202/
It took them many hours to check twitter and the satellites.
But surely someone from the volcano observatory, local aviation authority, etc., should have contacted Toulouse (and vice versa)? Their reporting time for e.g. Etna is c. 20 – 30 mins which seems to be on a par with other VAACs.
It’s Sunday? *facetious rhetorical comment*
Word!
I have been to Goma, Nyiragongo and the volcano observatory myself. For such a volcano so close to a large city there should be better monitoring.
As Carl said, they cut back the finances so were not fully monitoring the run up to this eruption. The signs were there.
I don’t know Carl:
“The United States said earlier this month that it is also linked to the Islamic State (IS) group.”
https://www.africanews.com/2021/04/08/strike-over-civilian-massacres-brings-dr-congo-s-east-to-a-halt/
Frankly, the volcano may be the least of their problems. I saw people wander away from the area. There might not be any deaths from the volcano. The airport seems to be in the wrong place.
I don’t know when you were there last, but Africa seems to have changed. Those guys are also interested in volcanoes, but more in what you described yourself in your piece about Tibesti:
https://www.volcanocafe.org/the-forgotten-volcanoes-of-chad-part-i/
DRC obviously has quite a bit of problems, and have had them for a really long time.
I would like to here insert my favourite quote.
We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
Doing things there are hard, but the local population did not ask for religious warlords and terrorists, coruption, companies trying to exploit them, countries semi-occupying them to steal their natural resources, countries building the most poisonous place on earth and then living their crap laying about… the list just goes on.
The volcano might be one of the simpler things to fix, but it is at least a place to start.
By every measure this is the most dangerous volcano in the world
? Campi flegrei? Some suspects around Guatemala City or Managua?
They don’t erupt twice per decade
Why are some volcanoes in Antarctica better monitored than some in Africa? At its heart the reason is simple: the locals.
Antarctica doesn’t have any actual locals, and the people who are there tend to be from relatively rich places with comparatively little corruption. Consequently funds appropriated for volcano observation actually go on volcano observation.
In Africa on the other hand the locals excel in killing each other in large numbers in many areas, extending that killing to any foreigners who happen to be around as well in many cases. Just today we’ve seen a good example of the sort of violence which is routine in many areas of Africa: there was an attack in Ethiopia using white phosphorous. Then we have massive corruption in large parts of the continent which means that funds appropriated for volcano observation often simply line the pockets of the local big-wigs. That was at least part of the reason why the World Bank pulled out of the Goma observatory.
So how to we actually protect the volcano observatory from local warlords and their forces? How do we ensure money appropriated for the volcano observatory actually gets spent on the volcano observatory? How do we stop the local kleptomaniacs stealing the monitoring equipment? Outsiders doing that smacks of colonialism and the white man’s burden which can seriously inflame tensions in the region, and also result in our local racialist activists screaming bloody murder as well. These are not easy questions to answer, but they are questions that must be answered if serious progress is to be made in monitoring these dangerous volcanoes in a more systematic, and helpful manner.
Not necessarily the locals. The Congo *should* be a rich country, but corruption prevents this. There is plenty of conflict within the country, it is so poor, they don’t think spending money on volcano monitoring is worth while.
Well said. Besides I think those places are only marginally helped by monitoring. They would lose their roof anyway. Now they had an eruption 19 years after the eruption in 2002. That would have been enough time to settle elsewhere, build up those quarters and the airport from scratch.
The same goes for Managua.
And Carl himself lives in GC and said they might lose their house one day. But he likes it there.
Humans basically live like dinosaurs. Close to volcanoes because it’s fertile land. Tell the people of Goma to move to the centre of the country, they would say No.
Tell Managuans to move to the Caribbean coast. They would say that they don’t want to die of Dengue-fever.
It’s a good cry, Carl, but the World Bank won’t hand out money to a corrupt and terrorist-ridden region. I understand it.
This isn’t normally a political forum.
However we have to accept that when the west ceased to have colonies and withdrew, which they would have had to by force anyway sooner or later, the people’s remaining became independent. Sadly that largely, in almost all cases, meant a return to kingdoms or warlords where the power lay with whoever had the most weapons and force. Generally low levels of education meant that taking whatever you could by force was the easy way to power and enrichment. This is what happened.
Even worse the bountiful foreign aid went largely to the government/army/officials/local leaders and little to those it was supposed to go to.
That’s one reason why (for example) if china builds a road/railway/port/whatever its not done by giving funds, but by physically building it themselves with chinese labour. Anyone attempting to steal/damage/obstruct the building is ‘dealt with’, often by being shot as a thief. It rarely happens, people rapidly learn. The chinese understand this and are politically not affected by a free press producing shock-horror stories at every turn.
Sadly, given the political sensitivity at home, there is nothing the west can do at all, other than accept large numbers of refugees. That’s just the facts. Sad but true.
I met a man from Angola in Portugal once. He said it would be a better country if the Portuguese were still the rulers. He wished them back there. They don’t trust their own people.
It’s not uncommon for people to look back to the past and believe life was ‘better back then’ but these are often mislead, fantastic, views and wishing for a better world:
‘People used to leave their doors unlocked, there was less crime’ when I fact the opposite is true. The Blitz is a good example of this but you find it everywhere today. People think Stalin was better but have forgotten the millions AND millions of people who died under his regime.
As an Australian born person of British decent now living in Canada, my family and I have benefited immensely from Britain’s colonialist past however I am not comfortable when that rests on a history of genocide,
slavery, and simple greed … and all within living memory for some still alive today. I would put good money the argument that 95% of all conflict in today’s world is as a direct result of its colonial history. I am not saying the world would be a better place if it didn’t happen, but it would be different, unrecognisable. The world powers dropped the Mike …
Well, the British were the best. Story of Mauritius: 1. Portuguese, 2. Dutch (ate up the Dodo bird and the giant turtle, both extinct). 3. French (brought slaves), 4. British (did away with slavery).
I checked every single state in Africa for infibulation. It’s worst where the French and the Belgians were colonial powers, least in the British realm.
They were the more moderate ones in RSA.
They kept the US from installing the Morgenthau Project in post-war Germany.
So, there are huge differences. I think the Brits were the very best and often tried their best. They have huge comprehension and sympathy for other countries, and students feel quite welcome on British shores.
I think no colonial power will look back on its colonial history with any sense of pride. The slave trade was of course the most obvious aspect. But how about biological warfare? There are two known occasions where the British deliberately introduced small pox in order to eradicate the troublesome natives (Sydney 1789; Fort Pitt 1763). How about starvation? The Irish famine was so devastating because the British rulers refused to help. Reading documents of the time shows that the Irish were seen as subhuman by the British. The use of starvation only stopped after the horrors of the Boer war became known. Man is a wolf to man.
Ireland was NOT a colony at the time of the potato famine. It was a fully-integrated part of the UK and had been so for over 40 years at the time. Prior to that it was a kingdom in personal union with the United Kingdom of Great Britain and prior to that in personal union with England. Now of course in some ways that makes the treatment of the Irish population even worse!
Denaliwatch is correct in that of all the colonial powers the UK was the least bad, and in some cases the nostalgia for UK rule is actually justified! There are still an awful lot of very big blots in the copybook of UK treatment of its colonies. The Amritsar Massacre is an example from India for instance. Anyone who pretends things like that didn’t happen is being wilfully ignorant. However equally anyone who pretends that UK colonial rule was completely bad is also being wilfully ignorant. Why is India a democracy? The UK. Why don’t headhunters operate in New Guinea anymore? The UK. Two examples of good things which UK colonial rule led to.
As with everything there is nuance to the situation and a balance to be struck, which simplistic activists simply cannot accomplish. Which side was the expansionist imperialists during the Zulu War of 1879? BOTH sides were! The current Marxist efforts to “decolonise” things are disgraceful, especially given those great efforts of Marxist history the Holodomor and the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Hypocrisy doesn’t even begin to cover it when it comes to these activists and the ideology they support.
How about the complete genocide of the Tazmanian Aboriginal population? They may have banned slavery within the UK but that didn’t stop a government supported infrastructure and individuals driving and profiting from the trade. The list goes on, and on, and on. No colonial power was better than another, there are just good/bad individuals and examples.
I do like Angry Carl.
It’s shocking in this day and age that Africa doesn’t have some form of geological monitoring agency, but then again as the SAS say – This Is Africa. A continent pillaged by the rich countries of the world and then left to rot. Between the extreme poverty, the genocidal Rwandans next door, the equally unstable Congo government and surrounded by geet big fire-breathing monsters, Goma must be up there with Pennywell as one of the worst places to live.
Observatoire Volcanologique de Goma (OVG) monitors Nyiragongo.
That as may be but they might as well be eating soup with a fork. My local cricket club is better funded by the sounds of it
Pennywell?
It’s in Sunderland. Like a Jeremy Kyle spawning zone
Sismic crisis all day, and now this one… i think it’s the bigest quake of the day there…
M4.5 strikes 5 km SE of #Goma (Dem. Rep of Congo) 44 min ago
I just realised something about this picture, really shows the scale and speed of the flow. That bright patch in the channel at lower left is not where it falls down a steep slope, it is a standing wave, on flat ground…
Again also im not sure this is an exact repeat of 2002, the vent I think is singular and more a radial vent, and the flow much larger than any single flow in 2002 was, over 15 km long possibly to reach the airport from where I think the vent is. 2002 was a volcanic rifting event so a fissure eruption and deep dike, this is just a shallow breakout I think. As always need pictures to confirm though and I could be entirely wrong.
I am wondering if the vivid colour we see here and other photos is due to the high alkali content – purple-red from potassium and bright orange from sodium for example.
This is Nephelinite lava so its really superalkaline and superlow in sillica.. a product of the very smallest ammounts of partial melting in the mantle
If funding were to be provided, how would anyone guarantee that the money was put into funding volcano monitoring and disaster planning?
Possible idea, building on Carl’s foundation: USGS & EU fund university volcanism grad student teams, professional or faculty advisors, and equipment directly. Young people have enormous energy and there is an incredible need . . .
This is an excellent point.
Research grants would pay for at lest a seismometer or GPS station or two.
That area can be risky to visit though. Shocking that Antarctica is better monitored.
I can guarantee that within 12 months it will mostly be syphoned off.
We cannot run the world, the world is not listening nor does it care.
Well done, (good and faithful) Carl.
Decisions to pull funding denied obviously needed monitoring to hundreds of thousands who had nothing to do with the corruption. The populace in Goma are living, breathing people who have little choice about where they live and had nothing to do with the problems that culminated in withdrawal of funding. Albert’s single sentence comment above provides all the context needed to understand the tremendous danger under which they live.
An alternative funding & oversight mechanism could have been found. The relatively few who lost their lives THIS time is a blessing, no doubt, and should serve as an international clarion call to revisit the funding issue without delay. The news cycle is short and so is the window for getting the attention of those who can do something about this.
Perhaps our correspondences to EU, et. al., should furnish a link to your excellent and personal article.
Many thanks.
Great rant Carl, well said.
But I don’t think the lava reached the airport this time. Saw pictures of the flow in daylight today and mentions that the lava never reached the airport and stopped a few hundred meters before reaching it.
Here is a tweet about the cooling flow: https://twitter.com/KennedyNari/status/139640922883583590
Excellent and well-timed rant, Carl.
It’s not the folks living in Goma causing the problems, it’s the suits ‘above’ them that make the mess.
What I find infuriating is the World Bank acting like any bank. Looks iffy? Pull the plug and protect the Bank first
I’m sure the local volcano observatory staff want to do the best they can. If the suit & tie execs in the World Bank had a spine, they would make sure they had the funding to do it.
Sadly, the suits and ties run scared of risk. Like any bank.
Perhaps we should not be surprised to see a bank behaving like a bank rather than a charity or government.
Last comment RE: Albert’s last post on Twister’s in the Snow.
Took a while to fish my library, but here’s a nice paper in the Geophysical Research Letters
regarding the probable Redding tornado resulting from the 2019 CARR fire.
Looks like the met community is going to have to redefine some of the these phenomena to match the realities of observation.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018GL080667
I’m so angry that I cannot trust myself to make a coherent response to this article tonight (it’s half past one in the morning and I need to go to sleep).
Has anyone noticed that the Gervitunglamyndir webcam time-lapse photos aren’t getting updated/uploaded immediately? Yesterday and today, they’ve been tardy by up to 40 minutes. Example: I tried to look at 24/5/2021 at 1.30 am BST, ie 12.30 am GMT, but was told the page didn’t exist. This has never happened before.
Should be 00.30 GMT, but you’ll probably understand the mistake…
Thanks for the article, Carl. I have had several trips to central Africa and understand the dilemma. Lots of NGO’s are trying though. Maybe one of them would sponsor a volcano monitoring mission.
Elsewhere, M4.2 on Hilina fault (Kilauea).
BBC TV reported that the 8~~10 deaths during Goma’s part-evacuation were due to a traffic accident. No details.
Seems lava has stopped advancing, as if this flash-flood was due to the lava-lake draining.
WRT the underfunded observatory, the crew would surely be seen as ‘juicy targets’ by every extremist within range. Including sundry homicidal factions sorta-based in Rwanda…
Be NOT There.
Like the Tibesti Massif, safer to watch from orbit…
Difference is that Goma has ‘some’ access to ‘social media’…
https://www.ruv.is/sjonvarp/beint/ruv2 seems to show some active venting going on to the extreme right around 2:21 am. Is this a new vent?
A surge is starting up now, back on the eastern side where the dam was. 02:31 am two trucks zipped over to check it out.
Thank you Carl. I try to keep politics out of discussions on here and elsewhere. However for once, I too feel so strongly about corruption in Governments around the world and including the UK!
I lived in Jamaica for a few years soon after independence. Like so many newly independent countries there was civil unrest as local political groups fought for power. Throw in the local drug related gangs and the desire to totally rid the country of the trappings of white colonial rule and you get political and economic mayhem. This situation is not a good base on which to build a democratic and effective political system. In Africa things are made worse by historical Tribal feuding and religious zealots.
The answer to all this is Time. Hard though it is to stand by and watch the seemingly uncaring and the “Life is cheap” attitude, time must be allowed for a country’s population to find their voice and realise that actually, they have the greatest power.
Historically, Africa contained some of the greatest and richest powers in the world. Highly organised and successful, they traded and prospered.
Today ,quietly, some African countries are on the right road. Despots have been deposed and new, wealthier economies are being built.
The world in general must stop the blame culture. Racism and religious intolerance is at the root of much of the warfare and resulting poverty. Black against white, White against Black. Asian religions v. western religions, Asian religions v. other Asian religions, Western religions v. other Western religions.
We are dealing with humans here and we don’t have a good track record do we?
Only time will help heal the rifts.
Give a population time to rebuild their country. This will take revolutions of all types. Europe , the UK, USA, Canada have all gone through this process and are still evolving.
Outsiders cannot make these changes. They have to come from the hearts and actions of the people.
I am sorry if this all sounds like Facebook platitudes but it is my humble opinion.
Here endeth the lesson…now back to volcano watching. Again, Time will show us how this Icelandic volcano will evolve,. Outsiders building walls may slow down the inevitable but sooner or later the power of natural balance will win through.
and in the mean time, we can support a volcanic warning system at least. Give all the factions time to get out.
Yes DD. They must work it out for themselves (we are effectively powerless), and this will be over the dead bodies of some of their populations,
Congo pop
1960 15M
1990 34M
2020 90M
Do not even think of looking up ethiopia/higeria (for example).
Dear Diana!
For some countries I agree with you.
But Congo is a completely different ballgame altogether.
The Belgians ran the country in a way that in the end forced the world community (The UN) to step in to oust them from the country. The outfall of the Belgians and the war to oust them left the country completely in ruins.
So much so that nobody really ruled the country for decades. This left the entire place open for Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army (the closest to pure evil ever encountered in our time). This caused the second Congo war, and once again the UN had to come in to limit the carnage.
This once more left the country in ruins.
And then we have not even come into the cluster-bleep that is Shinkolobwe… where the entire western world led by the US royally bleeped Congo over (together with the Belgians..). Leaving that cluster-bleep unattended is a gift that is still giving, guess where Jolly Joe of North Korea got his uranium?
So yes, Congo is a sinkhole we created. Can we fix it? Sadly only partially at best. Should we try to clean up our mess? Yes, definitely. Especially Shinkolobwe, after all they did not build the most radioactive place on earth, they did not leave stockpiles of yellowcake on the ground…. and so on.
For anyone interested in a crash course in unattended horrors, please take a read.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinkolobwe
Congolese have many nightmares beyond Kony. Some of them get massive funding from our own countries (looking at you Paul Kagame). The place is also huge – the map projection betrays the size of half of Western Europe.
The one thing that is curse and blessing for esp. Eastern Kongo is that is a complete geological scandal. Many countries are using and abusing the ridiculous amount of valuable minerals and in some instances run state within state.
Always wondered how come DRC was endowed with such ridiculous amounts of minerals.
I had not heard of shikolobwe so ‘thanks’ for the crash course – my brain struggles trying to decide whether it wants to be informed when it doesn’t like what it finds – sigh
Thank you Carl ..
Now we will also see how the summit crater interior looks like.. wants photos. Only the lava in the upper magma column was erupted this time. The lake is drained away
The eruption was caused by the high pressure of a 3 kilometers tall and 300 m wide magma column of the lava lake. The Nyiragongo ruptured on its side.. and the lava came roaring out! at great speeds. Around 15 persons have now been confirmed dead.
I hopes the lava lake returns soon since its the huge local tourist attraction.. togther with the mountain gorillas, will take years to build up to 2021 lava lake levels again.. .
If it is only a shallow level intrusion the lava might come back right away. Its not really that comparable in scale but the two big flows from Pu’u O’o in 2011 might be of reference, the Kamoamoa eruption in March was a bigger rift intrusion and there was no activity at all for a while after, 3 or 4 weeks I think. The second breakout in August saw lava flood down several km in only an hour or so, and while the crater was quiet for 2 weeks lava returned only a few days after the flank vents stopped. That flow was lava breaking out the base of the cone from a lava lake built in the crater formed in the previous collapse above, no deep intrusions though the drop in pressure saw a response at Halemaumau.
In this analogy the 2002 eruption at Nyiragongo was like Kamoamoa, while the August eruption is more like what we saw just recently. Obviously though the great height of the magma column and bigger volume of lava involved adds a huge boost to the eruption, it is more about 2 km than 3 km as Goma is well above sea level but the effect is still considerable. It looked like in that video of the fast flow near the vents the fountains had already died down a lot, so the majority of the lava was probably erupted in only a few hours, the vents spattering a bit afterwards while the massive flood of lava moves downslope under its own power like a dam burst flood.
In this exact situation too the volume of lava still underground is quite minor, in the absense of a bigger dike. The lake assumed to be a cylinder is 300 meters wide and 2 km of it is above the vent more or less, that gives a possible volume of 141 million m3 of lava erupted, which is quite a colossal amount to erupt in a few hours, effusive VEI 5 basicaly… I suspect it is a lot less realistically but still bigger than 2002 or 1977.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9_lonWDFB4k&fbclid=IwAR12elUTyCs7NHdOJ941VRD7nzETUQo5gcpGYkQ3do8mHroxtrcfMuO_c0o
Yes its a standing wave .. This is insanely Impressive.. looking rather like a Mauna Loa near fissure flow
Standing currents and waves dots all along last nights Nyiragongo lava flow so it was flowing very quickly indeed.
Its flowing at quick walking speed there. If you are a slow turtle or snail then you are doomed ..
Amazing How these Goma trees simply resist,with their bases being submerged for hours in Active Aa lava. All these will turn brown in comming days
But cold trees are mostly water
And lava have very low heat conductivity and chill a protecting shell around them..
Thats why they dont burn even If submerged in molten rock
It takes a long time to boil them dry too. When they trunk burn away topple over they will leave tree mold holes behind .. even If that is a more pahoehoe thing and things fluid smooth lava currents do
Pahoehoe flows are often covered with fallen trees that later gets overunned by breakouts.
Aa lavas like these in Goma mostly crush everything in their path.. Unless they are very thin.. luckly the lava flows did not hit the gas station this time .. in 2002 that caused explosions massive enough to destroy walls nearby
https://kutv.com/news/nation-world/volcanic-eruption-ensuing-chaos-kill-at-least-15-in-congo?fbclid=IwAR3wLDfBdY0eUANsGMrPI9cW9K-7NhR3m_UmJjpkQfcBxTj_0itSRdLfq_Q
15 persons been incenirated by the lava flows
A thoughtful read.. There is some news that now tell about the lack of fundings of monitoring of volcano. Hope that some how can result in something. And about the flow i think it was little lucky this time, that the flow did not go direction against Goma from beginning as it look. I hope it stay with this now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKmzhiA-uc4
Drone shot from Goma
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwOuDz0cQJA
maybe better one
Some what lucky that the cell tower survived…
https://youtu.be/BA-9QzIcr3c
6:45 there is a bubling spot under that steady fumarole…..new vent?
https://youtu.be/8Gx7yKhY3II
a better view…..or could be a lava tube exit from ragnar? anyway….got a continous activity..that lava pool doesn’t loose the lever althought is this tiny expelling point, once again: new vent?
Definitely a lava tube, but one which is probably draining the lava lake a a high rate and right towards Natthagi.
This eruption comes from the mantle and is gas rich, even if a vent opened under existing lava there would be a fountain, not a low upwelling like we see here. This is a lava tube outlet or possibly a large failure in the side of the pond, both of which will be significant to future flow direction.
Taal’s steam plumes have been getting smaller over the past couple of days, but I’ve noticed that recently the earthquakes, gas emissions, and the like, have come in pulses. New inflation has come up. More and more significant signals are showing.
new lava type? is so white almoust like a mud
Noticed the same, almost white gray lava now and I wonder what it is? There seems to be lots of smoke whenever a burst occurs.
I also noticed that the exit point is slowly getting higher and higher. Are we going to reach a point where no lava exits because it has to be pushed so high to exit? Will there just be pistoning sloshing lava then but no flow to the lava field?
Fagradalshraun.. Thats the extremely fluid shiney glassy pahoehoe lava crust that reflect light. .. givning it an almost metallic color. .. very common texture in Hawaii where the lavas are also very fluid
Carl Rhenberg! the grey shiney stuff is just normal texture of a very fluid smooth lava spatter to answer your FB group question
While I in principle agree that all major volcanoes worldwide should be monitored closely, you did leave out the reason for the World Bank to halt the funding for this particular observatory: the major corruption issues. That i highly disingenuous. You make it sound like they stopped funding because they simply didn’t care, which is not at all the case. They stopped the funding because the money was getting stolen.
That has been pointed out by several people. Corruption is a massive problem here. So is poverty: monitoring equipment is stolen quickly and monitoring can really only be done remotely. But what risk do you find acceptable? Here is a volcano capable of overrunning a major city within an hour. It gives months of warning that an eruption is coming. Should we let the warning signs go unnoticed because of corruption?
You have it backwards. Equipment cannot be installed because of theft/corruption.
Its not as if you could do it if you chose, you can’t do it in that location.
Too many people seem to be unaware of how most of the world lives/survives. No social backstop whatsoever, if you cannot ear enough to feed yourself, you die.
Its not surbiton.
Why would they want to steal the volcano monitoring equipment?
Anyway, excellent article Carl.
That equipment has valuable metals and electronics that can be sold on the black market.
I was not disingenous.
The country was a corrupt war zone overrun by warlords when it the funding was made available, so the corruption was not an issue back then, so why should it be now?
Generally I am all in favour of anti-corruption work. In the end it is the only way to make things better in parts of Africa.
My point is that there are better ways to combat corruption than removing funding for something as essential as volcano monitoring.
The disingenous part was made by the World Bank who blamed corruption for something that was a political move.
For instance, there have been three M4 earthquakes since the eruption started. The USGS located to within 10-20 km of the volcano, but that is the best location we have. They are almost certainly within the volcano (even in Iceland USGS can be off by tens of kilometers) but we can’t tell without local measurements. There were likely many precursor quakes – but we don’t know. We don’t know whether the fissures that direct lava towards Goma form during the eruption or exist beforehand (the latter is likely). You cannot warn for what you do not see.
Not sure obviously but it appears these quakes might be collapse quakes, the crater floor subsiding. I dont know if it is big enough to count as a caldera or a pit crater, it is borderline in size at 1.2 km wide, but the same structure regardless.
In response to those saying that financial aid is pointless because it gets redirected by corrupt officials etc.
If financial support is provided, it may well be stolen, leaving the people without adequate monitoring of a very dangerous volcano.
That’s bad. I think we can all agree on that.
If no funding is provided, or if the funding is stopped, then that high probability of inadequate monitoring and commensurate risks to the local population becomes an absolute certainty.
That is NOT a step in the right direction.
1984 – Population: 77,908, 2015 – Population: 368,165 (estimate).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Goma
I strongly believe that the world could have helped those people by financing contraceptives. And it still can do it.
I tried to find a map of Goma for 1950/60. I bet the place was not so close to Nyiragongo.
It’s extremely difficult to govern big countries with an unlimited population growth. The Chinese saw this early.
Look at Covid in Brazil and in India.
Jacques Attali wrote a book about the future (Und brève Histoire de l’Avenir), translated, but expensive now as a used book. He thinks there will be fragmentation.
Yes. For some reason, almost certainly religion, contraception has been largely ignored in recent decades.
Also note that from Kabul to Capetown poor males consider large numbers of children as showing their prowess rather than their stupidity.
I think you are referring to the US where some religious groups really have gone back to the stone age in recent years. But that is one group who may be rather loud but does not speak for the majority anywhere. That is true among christianity, islam, or otherwise, in my experience. Contraception is by and large a female choice. After all, they are the ones left to carry the baby. To allow their widespread use requires that they have knowledge, and have their own plans for their lives. And of course, access to contraception. That is also needed.
Albert,
islam is in general anti-contraception.
The general situation for most women in most of the islamic world are effectively that they are chattels. Not in the educated section, but go into the countryside and its quite different. In many cases, (eg egypt) in stark contrast to a few decades ago. Erdogan and many islamic rulers have extreme support from a backward countryside that dominates electorally.
The islamic people I talk are not like that – and a lot of islamic scientists in my field are female. Sure, it is a problem and things have gone backward in much of the world. But birth rates have plummeted worldwide, including in conservative islamic countries. Southern Africa is different but studies have found a relation to the wars 20 years ago – and their impact on female education. There is a delay of 20 years which has to be considered.
I fully agree on the need for contraceptives and education about their usage.
In general I have a far dimmer view on the problem, it will cause widespread mass-starvation on a global scale, and at best we are 1 billion at the end of this century. And yes, I hope that I am at least partially wrong on this.
You might be right, but this goes also for Campi Flegrei and all the other suspects around the equator that you and colleagues painstakingly collected on this site.
Sadly you are right. There will be mass famine, and wars for food (which will destroy agriculture locally), probably about the time the old world ecology is totally destroyed. Its not as if anyone wants it, and its not as if nobody sees it coming, its just a politically unacceptable truth that we sweep under the carpet, along with global warming and impossible to achieve ‘zero carbon economies’.
Carl a large portion of the population increase around Goma and other towns in the Eastern Congo are caused by the security situation in the region. The population has moved into the towns to get protection from the marauding band of rebel groups. I am a recently retired member of the South African Defence Force and our forces have been part of the UN mission for about 15 years now. One of our bases was built on the outskirts of Benni in open countryside, now it is at the center of a vast sprawling township, as the population moved to a secure area. Unfortunately birth control is not universally welcomed in Africa, it goes against thier culture. In a place where pension funds for old age is a foreign concept, your children are your pension, they are obliged through customary law and tradition to look after thier families in thier old age. The so called black tax so prevalent in Africa.
Unfortunately Carl we cannot allow war to happen, because the world is ridden with nukes and biologicals weapons. Mass starvation would mean a serious risk to the world in terms of those weapons being used. For instance in India and Pakistan.
Yes, we are heading for.some serious challenges and we need really to act to stop our infinite human stupidity and infinite unkindness creating serious damage to ourselves.and our species.
Effort is needed to create a positive nurturing environment. Likewise, we don’t need much to create chaos. We just need to release a pathogen or allow one to spread freely and chaos in ensured!
Climate change, extreme politics and religion, limited resources, overpopulation, nukes, greed, and lack of common sense. The list is long. I just hope that I am wrong too.
I like to think that our current problems are solvable. On population growth, this is decreasing faster than anyone had expected. Even China is now expected to reach peak population 7 years earlier than predicted even 3 years ago. On climate change, the requirements are clear and although a massive task, there nothing in it that is not doable. The main problem is that established industries loose out and some prefer that the world ends rather than them. The rise of autocracy is a big problem. The way things are going, in 20 years time Germany will be the only democracy left. I blame it on the after effects of the 2008 crisis, and the fear people have for the future. The environment can be saved most easily by reducing our dependency on cattle. All of these are feasible within decades. But the longer we postpone, the more difficult it becomes. Some problems just refuse to accept denial as a solution.
The same is true in the most poverty-stricken parts of the world as it is in the poorer parts of the UK. There tends to be more people having kids and people having more than 2+ kids compared to the wealthiest.
There are a number of reasons for this, historically it was because of a high infant mortality rate, these days people are trapped in cycles, often just above or below the poverty line, chores take less time, people have less hobbies, sex is readily available for a lot of people.
Of course this doesn’t apply so much to Africa, but when life is a perennial struggle then enjoyment and the gift of life is an absolute blessing for these people. There is also an extremely high rape rate across the Congo region.
Dear Carl, I appreciate yor work very much, so I am sorry to state that I consider this a lost case. And sending students there would be much too dangerous if it’s true that the IS is working in the area. They could be abducted.
There is one big region where every cent makes sense. It’s a rhomboid structure between Cascadia and south of Santiago, including Galapagos in the West and the Antilles in the East.
Then, if we draw a line around the Sunda region up to Japan including the Phillipines we have a second large region where money and equipment makes sense. Plus New Zealand/Tonga/island arc/ Tasmania.
Africa is in many ways a failure, and the Congo is sort of a Failed State. Maybe we shouldn’t meddle. If we didn’t get involved they might figure it out in the long run. There’s an opinion by historians that WWI also started because there were too many young men at the time. As long as they think the White Man is their main problem they won’t figure it out. They have the same racism among them, Hutu vs. Tutsi mostly. We got more or less beyond it. The British hating the Frogs, the Germans hating the Polish is the past, mostly.
When we see what’s going on in the streets against Israel we know that south of the Mediterranean racism is the main problem. Then waging wars, then not getting anywhere. I’m not talking about folks – there are nice folks everywhere – but their leaders.
After the Tsunami in Japan my husband and I gave 1k. We knew it would arrive. We got a beutiful long letter from the Japanese Embassy expressing their gratefulness, a very gracious letter, very Japanese in many ways.
We also donated for the Sunda earthquake and Tsunami. We did not get any reaction at all. We don’t even know where the money ended up.
After the Boxing Day Tsunami, bereft Attenborough family gave best part of million UKP/GBP to the relief works. Their ‘trusted local agent’ took the money and ran. IIRC, family’s ‘private detectives’ are still hunting him…
Problems become unsolvable when they have been let to fester for too long. Inaction is not a solution. In the long term, education is the way out. It takes long-term effort: education requires 20 years of work. When unsure what to do, support education programs. It needs all the other things too: without food or houses, people can’t study. But this is what makes a lasting difference.
I tried, Albert. I had a foster child by some organisation. It was in Colombia. After a while the organization lied it had moved and gave me another foster child. They just took my child away. When they did it a third time I quit.
It’s easier with a personal contact or a letter saying thank you. If they hadn’t taken my foster child away I might contribute to her studies today. Those org don’t really have the right attitude, and I often wonder how much money disappears in their swamp.
“education requires 20 years of work”
Vast amounts of Western aid have vanished in the last 70 years, hundreds (probably thousands in that timescale) of volunteers and aid workers have been killed on the continent.
170 years ago Europeans, like Africans, had seven, eight, ten kids of whom maybe five would die in infancy. As they developed better healthcare, education, clean water, fresh foodstuffs, vitamins, basic contraception (condoms) so child deaths almost vanished and family size reduced.
But in Africa nearly all the improvements in healthcare and education were imported (first two things a Catholic missionary group would set up – a school and a hospital) – as were the improvements in food supply and water. Child deaths much reduced, but the European reduction in family size didn’t happen.
In 1950 the populations of Europe and Africa were approximately equal at about 500 millions. Europe’s population has stayed at that level while Africa’s has quadrupled.
Goma is one of the more dangerous places on earth even without the volcano. It was only three months ago that the Italian Ambassador to the DRC was shot and killed near Virunga.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goma#Conflict_since_the_end_of_the_war
Altruism is good, but not suicidal altruism. How many troops would be needed to protect geologists and their equipment?
Let me clear up one thing about safety.
There are guided tours up to the top of Nyiragongo on a weekly basis that takes western tourists nowadays. They normally have a couple of guards with the obligatory Kalashnikov, but they are more for show so that the tourists would feel safe.
Problem is not the safety of the geologists, but the equipment would need to be bolted down quite securely. The same goes for most volcanoes across the planet, even Iceland has to do it so that people do not steal the batteries.
I am not blue eyed and innocent, I was there during the war. I am quite realistic about judging dangers.
“even Iceland has to do it so that people do not steal the batteries”
Now you do shock me. I always consider Iceland a pretty law-abiding place.
In the former Soviet Union people would steal the nuclear power sources from remote lighthouses and monitoring equipment, often with fatal consequences.
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/radevents/1999RUS2.html
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/radevents/2001GEO1.html
While looking at the sad news reports from Goma, I stumbled across this excellent piece about the Icelandic eruption. Some really nice footage and a couple of good interviews with well known volcanologists.
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/geldingadalir-volcano-60-minutes-video-2021-05-23/
Thank you.
Comment removed for containing distressing content -admin
Link is broken. I would think that it has been taken down, by FB, because of the graphic nature, which you so eloquently described.
Nope it works.. you just needs to
Search their page .. normaly
Bolentín Del Tiempo
on normal FB search
Go into your FB and find that page ..
And find the lava photos post
Its a page with hurricane infrared on its page photo profile
The photo is covered But its NOT breaking FB s laws .. FB says
You can find it there
These FB links never works to post
You haves to do the search yourself on FB
I don’t really want to see pictures of dead people, so I don’t know why i clicked the link. Anyway, for me the link showed a bunch of dead animals, then if you click through the images there is one with something burned on top of the lava, but I think it’s a monkey, not a person.
Its a person ..
And one of the Photos are from closer to the upper vents .. lava looks fluid there .. confirms Chads turbulent waves in the lava channels
Perhaps up at vent its the most fluid pahoehoe lava we will see for a long time
It is disgusting. Also disgusting to promote those photos here.
To quinauberon,
they are horrendous, as are the Pompei casts.
However that does not mean they should be excised, the horror and dangers of volcanoes should be as prominent in our minds and their beauty and splendour.
Note that both Albert and Carl never cover over the dangers, either. Nor should we.
Horrors have to be seen, or they are forgotten.
@farmeroz: Let’s not further discuss this. The people that watch and share these pics are not on a pedagogical mission, but are mostly digital posers. Let’s agree that there is a common minimal lower bound for decency here in the cafe, o.k.?
We don’t cover over the dangers. But the dignity of the dead is also important, and especially so when there are living relatives. Suffering is not entertainment.
I dont promote anything looks like the lava flowed terribley fast .. pretty much unique to Nyiragongo
Usualy these Aa flows flow very slowly .. too slow to trap persons
I seen even more ugly photos.. but
I wont post them here … a really ugly sad situation for soure
Now I haves to leave computer.. our very old neighbur here ( nickname Bosse ) steals everything from us .. all firewood is gone he broken in into the night…
He needs a lava flow in his backyard for soure ..
Still I plan to write my own volcano Nyiragongo article for VC .. Nyiragongo is a really unique volcanic region : )
I think this is the first Volcanocafe Nyiragongo article thats ever been written
Oh yes, do it. And about the other one Nyamuragira. There are eight, Wikipedia has only five:
http://volcanolive.com/congo.html
Hope the site is ok.
Photo is open for everyone to see on FB .. its just covered over for a warning ( click show photo ) to show the mess .. But he looks rather like a lava lump itself ..
I guess the rest of the victims are buried by lava terrible
Think some people were unable to leave their homes in time. Their homes were ignited by the lava.
That may be the guy who was reported as too ill to be safely moved by few available kin. By the time help obtained, too late…
Its amazing that Nyiragongo can be so active
Having large and long lived open lava lakes and capable of large flank eruptions…as well as a well built edifice
When it have magma thats produced by the very smallest ammounts of partial melting in the mantle. Much less than 1% of mantle melting is needed to make the Nyiragongo Nephelinite
Most Nephelinites everywhere are monogenetic scoria cones .. so Nyiragongo is unique for the moment as a pure Nephelinite volcano
I decided to google this. And then I found this passage:
“A very interesting issue is the Ca substitution in the nephelines, related to the yoshiokaite component. Dominant yoshiokaite was originally reported from Fra Mauro Highlands of the Moon (Vaniman and Bish, 1990).”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/nepheline
So I wonder – hope this isn’t too stupid – whether the moon when it collided 4,5 ga, might have collided with what is Africa today.
You happen to know anything about it? I am thinking of the West African Craton precisely and the Richat Structure.
“While coesite, an indicator of shock metamorphism, had initially been reported as being present in rock samples collected from the Richat Structure, further analysis of rock samples concluded that barite had been misidentified as coesite.”
—Whackadoodle
The Moon forming impact pretty much put the ENTIRE planet back into a Hadean state. A significant amount of the crust that was launched into the ring that formed the moon is geochemically, no different than the crust we have left.
Some monitoring of Nyriagongo has been done. There is a report dated December 2020 on GVP’s site
https://volcano.si.edu/showreport.cfm?doi=10.5479/si.GVP.BGVN202012-223030
Contraceptives is not the only issue there, Carl. They have hundreds if not thousands of stories about rape. Their second problem besides racism is misogyny. And I read some interviews with women stating that they don’t want to be pregnant all the time. As Albert says it’s education.
The media know these things very well. So, wenn a catastrophe happens somewhere in the world they produce pics of women and pretty children.
Africa: Toxic masculinity.
Child warriers is another issue. No respect whatsoever for women and children, for the helpless and the innocent. Add animals, elephants and their ivory i.e.
Trust me, I know all about child warriors and the rest.
Education would be part of the solution, but contraceptives is a large part.
I would though say that toxic masculinity is not only an african problem, it tends to crop up across the planet.
Yes, I’m very sure you know about the under developed world, from first experience.
You need many things to work together to start to fix this problem, which exists in very many parts of the world from Kabul to capetown and eastwards.
That’s the problem. Without jobs for the educated then education has no value, without education then contraception has no value and without contraceptions there are inadequate jobs. Cycle round that a few times and joining the army that feeds and protects you looks a great option. You may even get the chance for a bit of rape because as a third rate citizen of a third rate country, that’s as close to a girl as you will get.
Then you realise the inevitability of conflict, nobody wants it, but for many individuals there is no other option. Then as a warlord you keep a strong army or get murdered, even putin and Xi know that.
This is devastatingly pessimistic, but it might be the dire reality.
I would like to point out that life is not that dire, even in Congo.
You are missing the part that most people want to live nice lives and work as a counter force against the anarchy.
In most parts of Africa those forces are winning, and large parts of Africa is making great progress in most regards. I just hope they avoid making our errors. 🙂
I love Africa, I have seen the worst sides of it, and I have seen the best parts. Rarely where I expected to find it though.
I would also like to point out that there are worse parts of Africa than DR Congo. CAR and South Africa comes to mind.
My favourite is East Africa, especially Tanzania. Probably the nicest people on the planet, and darn safe to boot, rural Benin also turned out to be surprisingly nice. In fact, the majority of Africa is really nice.
Carl, yes, I agree. Actually most people want good for themselves and their families. Africans are absolutely no exception. Its a fact that corruption is rife, although the less you have the less it impinges on you. The problem is when people start coveting things belonging to others and see that it can be taken by force. Even the IRA got its strength from evicting protestant farmers and taking over their land, that was hugely popular amongst catholic farmers. I suspect rge Hutu/Tutsi battles were very similar. Same in zimbabwe, south africa is following etc etc.
Its not going to get easier.
Tragic really.
Uhhhhh NO , there is no way South Africa can even come close to being compared to CAR or Eastern Congo. I have lived in South Afrca for 62 years and while we have our share of problems we do not have open warfare in our streets nor mass rape and pillaging of towns and cities.
Look up The Women’s Rural University in Kigangaizi, Uganda. Its genius in its conception of creating leading roles for women in the local community. I have spent time at this University on behalf of Professors without Borders and despite having lived in several different African countries and having listened to the refrain ‘well, this is Africa’ to everything that goes wrong – I left the WRU feeling uplifted and hopeful. Pity more projects such as these are not rolled out throughout the continent.
Incidentally the Rural University also helps the many refugees leaving the Congo in search of a safer life. Girls aged 10 having been raped back at home etc etc.
Carls right …
Africa can be fantastic and as many tropical countries its a competely diffrent atmosphere and pace of living as well as diffrent cultural attitude and many are happier with a more simple approach to live.
Having warm weather all year around also makes a major diffrence
Im ALWAYS happier in the tropics than in my cold Arctic home .. tropics is a competely diffrent thing
Cold Northen places are depressing and Sweden and Finland here coud be the most boring and depressing places to live
And wine is too expensive 😉 That’s why I prefer the Mediterranean.
Our South African wine is comparable to the best in the world, and is very well priced, you should try some sometime. We also have Port (although its sold under a different name), sherries , Brandies and many indigenous liqueurs.
There are some very good south african wines (and as everywhere, some not quite so good ones), especially around Stellenbosch
Nyiragongo haves the worlds most unusual sillicate lavas. There is even stranger even more weird stuff than Nephelinites in Nyiragongos history. Many cinder cones at Nyiragongos flanks haves a Melinilite- Lecucite magma composition .. many of these strange magmas are produced in souch small ammounts by the mantle that perhaps most never makes it to the surface… and can be found as small dykes in large plutonic alkalines complexes
Sillicate content at current at Nyiragongo is 36% as a highly sillica undersaturated Melinilitic – Nephelinite lava .. anyway both mineral melt compositions at Nyiragongo is the product of really small ammounts of melting
Strange is Nyiragongo and Nyiramuragiras productivty despite being so Superalkaline
If it is produced by small amounts of melting isnt important if there is a big area doing the melting. Both volcanoes are massive sources of CO2 and SO2, alkaline magma might have more CO2 than tholeiite basalt but its still indicative of a lot of melting. Probably they both act as chimneys to degas a wide area, same as at other prolific gas venting volcanoes like Ambrym, Masaya or Popocatepetl. Hawaii is actually pretty unique in that most magma gets into the volcano, and about at least half erupts, most cases only a small fraction makes it above ground, but still degasses all of it.
” small amounts of melting isnt important if there is a big area doing the melting”
Well that mostly makes large monogenetic Alkaline fields
But I get your view
Thanks for this Carl: Shinkolobwe.
I did not know this pit before. After I’ve read about its history I think the Belgians, the Germans and the US should have to pay for closing it or supervising it, better close it in a way which excludes secret drilling and smuggle. The NS got hold of it after occupying Belgium, and the US used it for the Manhattan Project. It is more dangerous than the volcano as terrorists might want to get a grip on it. Media calls this simply “resources” as it’s too scary to digest. And utterly embarrassing.
I have been there. What I saw there is still giving me nightmares. The life expectancy in the villages around the mine is 23 years. There are mounds of semi-refined ore and yellowcake on the ground, leeching directly out into the waterflows and rivers.
When I saw it my heart broke. How can you do that to people?
Terrible. Further up you said that most people want to live nice lives. You have a point here I think. When I saw the BBC pics of people in the street I thought that they looked nice and had pretty dresses, probably handmade.
When you give clothes to Salvation Army (UK) its all exported to africa and by complex routes, giving employment to many on the way, ends up at a rural market, ready to be repurposed (as the UK did in the 1950’s).
Its blamed for there being no cheap garment industry in most of africa.
“How can you do that to people?”
Money and power?
I read Tim Butcher’s Blood River a few years back, he followed Stanley’s route across Africa, much harder now than it was in the 1950s. He recovers and freshens up in a fenced and guarded mining camp, which is like a different world, satellite tv, helipads, aircon, luxury everywhere, squalor just outside the gates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_River:_A_Journey_to_Africa%27s_Broken_Heart
I wonder if the Iceland lava has broken through the west wall yet, there were some ominous light areas on the dam last time I looked. Going up to see next week if the road’s still open.
Thank you, sounds very interesting, from the link: “a gripping story and an absorbing look at a country that has been moving backward for half a century.” Nicolas van de Walle
There’s a bit in it where he’s moving on a jungle path and he trips over something hard. Digs away at the mould with his boots – there’s a railway line, functional in the 1950s, now completely swallowed by the jungle.
Do they drink the water of those rivers? I suppose.
I reckon you know Russian submarine K19. The closer they came the faster they died (eight, had to work near the broken reactor). Two weeks later another fourteen or so had died. I suppose they were the ones that helped take care of the first group. The rest survived, some with problems and medical care. The famous Vasily Arkhipov (“The Man who Saved the World”) became 72 years old. He had been Executive Officer on K19. Captain Zateyjew reached the same age. They were born and died in 1926/1998.
I highly recommend a book called “King Leopold’s Ghost”, about what the Belgians did in the Congo.
Or rather, what King Leopold and his minions did, as most Belgians were told a different story at the time.
The lava in Goma is so brown already ..
Looks like horsecrap runn through everything Horse – poop everywhere 😂! A trillion billion horses have crapped.. just jokeing
Is it because the lava have rusted?
Confused. Why would pilots consult any volcanologist (armchair or otherwise) about whether or not it was safe to land in Goma? Surely they would consult the local aviation authority or airport?
In this case they wanted to know if there was ash in the air, and the local airport does not know a lot about volcanoes. Ash was obviously the last of the problems.
Getting hold of me who have been there was probably the best option they had, especially since I could call people I know there.
i guess You are the local airport authority, Carl…..
Photos of a vent lava channel have surfaced
Its half a meter wide .. and deeply drained
Indication of low viscosity magma
Linkie?
Here is the lava channel .. its tiny and deeply drained .. fluid .. but perhaps not as fluid as Nyiragongo can be at maximum.. Dr Charles Balagizi s photo. But viscosity haves to be very low indeed for lava to drain like that
Nyiragongo is a Nephelinitic melt.. so haves very little polymerzation sillicate content as low as 36% .. very sillica undersaturated magmas
But same features can be found in Hot Thoelitic Basalts at Kilaūea where viscosity is also extremely low .. temperatures are also important..
And most other Nephelinites are often quite cool and crystal rich in most other cases.. Oahu Sugarloaf Nephelinite flow is as highly viscosous flow near the vent
Nyiragongo is hot for being a superalkaline magma
Oh fear I crashed entire VC posting this link 😂
https://mobile.twitter.com/CharlesBalagizi/status/1396580573984985093/photo/1
This one is better .. what a nice fluid channel Thats been drained
Thanks. If you click on the “More Replies” link a couple comments down, there’s an interesting video of “fire” coming out of the ground below a building foundation.
Phil show me that fire .. cannot find it on the links
Jesper,
I’m not good at inserting stuff and don’t use Twitter. hopefully, this works, or at least gives you enough info to find it.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1396565479255330824
Maybe the twitter thread displays differently for different browsers, but when I click you link then scroll down five or six twits below the lava flow photo it says “Show More Replies.” when I click on that the fire video comes up.
hope you can find it.
When I click on it, the video comes up.
Completely agree on the rant.
I hope it’s not tonedeaf:
3 timelapses:
The Rúv Langihryggur camera view:
Yesterday between 11h and 17h with a big twister near the end. https://youtu.be/CvdvAkZT-Uk
and between 22h30 – 06h40 https://youtu.be/AzBbtzU95bQ
And the magical mystery tour with the mbl camera between 17h and 06h30.
Halfway the camera zooms in. https://youtu.be/sLtugIwJRMs
i would like to award Virtual a Gold Star (with Sparkles) for all of their (sorry…. i don’t know ihow You identify 🙂 ) hard work to provide an old lady with hours of enjoyment ……………………. Thanks! Best!mots
I would like to second mots’ proposal. With time-lapses we see so many slower trends and changes that are hard to perceive in real time. I’d love to be able to make up some timelapses myself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsQFX7gzE00
Back to iceland little, nice video of crater before burst and flow.
From inside crater after burst. Wanted see how low level get inside. so this is perfect
Like Albert you always seem so friendly, Carl, and now you had an eruption you said. I was thinking of a name for you. That might be Pinatubo the Second, as the First seemed to be a completely harmless jolly guy until 1991.
Carlvatn…
Similar to Taal lake…
From VISIR…some educated comments as to the reasoning behind future pre-emptive actions to help channel the lava flow as it drives towards the coast.
“Þorvaldur Þórðarson, a volcanologist, believes that the lava can reach Suðurstrandarvegur in one to two weeks. He says it is sensible to launch defenses in Nátthaga to restrict the lava’s movement towards the road and out to sea so that there is the least damage.
Þorvaldur says it is difficult to say exactly when lava will flow to Suðurstrandarvegur. It depends on whether the transmission channels are closed
“It is difficult to say at this stage. It all depends on how the lava behaves in Nátthaga. If it starts to spread in Nátthaga, it can take a considerable amount of time, maybe three to five weeks. But if it manages to form such a specific channel through Nátthagann, then the time is much shorter. Then we could be talking about one to two weeks, ”
https://www.visir.is/g/20212113452d/telur-hraunid-geta-nad-sudur-strandar-vegi-a-einni-til-tveimur-vikum
Over to Iceland, some overflows from the main channel, best seen on MBL camera. Nothing terribly huge/major….for the time being?
Carl, I honour your affiliation with the people there and also your warm perspective of Africa and its peoples.
From a sober point of view however, when the World Bank has to decide between a Volcano and a Tsunami warning system they would go for the latter.
It is 245 in 2002 in Congo and now 15, possibly a few more. The numbers for the North Pacific are close to16.000, for the Indian Ocean around 225.000. It seems to me that seaquakes are a lot more dangerous, and Cascadia can have a big quake any time.
As we can see, most people can walk away from lava flows, even fast ones, a tsunami in Oregon in summer wouldn’t allow this, too fast.
This is even more scary: “According to this estimate, the total death toll in the worst-case scenario would be as much as 323,000,…”
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11111-020-00346-6
The Nankai Trough.
And an eruption of Epomeo could cause a tsunami in Naples.
That’s a level headed view, the world bank would know a laki if they see it, alright.
Countering that point. My view is that Africa has been ruined by banks. The Communist banks are lending at the moment, coal mining, oil drilling, powerstation building, roads, etc… Debt is business.
The most perfect land management systems ruined by money, greed and bloody barbed wire.
If we all got what was best, it would be to live like the original tribal Africans, in harmony with nature.
Low numbers, low impact on the ecosystems.
Banks eh?
Sad but true.
Ahh, the noble savage.
I am not sure that the tribal africans lived in peace and harmony. It is easy to have to rosy a view of the pre-western society. Life in our middle ages could be brutal. Why would Africa be different?
Ahh, Thomas Hobbes. …the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
It wasnt Albert, just read up on the life and times of Shaka Zulu and Mzilikazi and the Mfecane. Comparable to the Napoleonic Wars.
Graham Davies, DH introduced me to the history of Africa via the author Wilbur Smith. A very entertaining starting point. I’ve subsequently found through genealogy that his family has very strong links to the southern Africa region, quite a co-incidence.
I lived in South Africa for a while. One of the highlights of my life was seeing Mandela on the day he was released from prison. Just being in the right place in the right time. The Drakensberg post is one of my own favourites.
Nature of evolution, it is too late to go back now. Rosy coloured glasses at play here with most of these comments, living a tribal lifestyle means fighting for life, every second of the day you could die, and in the end something gets you. We arent a weak animal, actually quite a powerful one when we dont hold back, but we arent the apex predator, and death by lions is far less clean and cut than it ever appears in documentaries.
Perhaps the fear aspect still exists, but its not always fight or die anymore.
My reply to Albert was more appropriate here. 🙂
As was said here there is no ideal life. Study the family life of James Cook. His poor wife survived him and all six children. Two died in their birth year, one at the age of four, one at the age of seventeen of Scarlet Fever, one went down with the HMS Thunderer, and the oldest one died at the age of 31. James Cook himself was killed by nobles on famous Hawai’i.
For Africa google the Guinea Worm and Bilharzia, both happy in lakes and ponds. That was life with nature.
We’d be fewer though, that’s right, but you don’t know whether you would be subareal or not. I prefer some solid drugs and vaccinations.
I cannot imagine the grief of having six children and surviving every single one, and have your husband be murdered as well as being out at sea most of the time.
Mrs. Cook was a trouper, that is for sure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiKJQ0hzyqA shows another view of the Geldingadlir active vent from start to finish, fascinating glimpse of how the effusion of gas plays a major part in these geyser like events.
An overflow close to theater hill. last time it did it get a flow straight against where west wall is. see if it get same or if the overflow stop. Its some people thet need to hurry back if wall overflow.. Or be very good at longjump..
Back to the Iceland eruption (sorry folks). The Langihrygger “dam cam” seems to show that the surviving dam may be slowly being overrun. It’s difficult with the low quality picture, but during a period of good light I think I could see numerous lava lumps have rolled off down the earth slope and are littering the dam and the ground.
Meanwhile, Gutn Tog (have we offered him honorary VC Dragonship yet?) put up a video whereby I discovered the white square is a small temporary office and the object parked nearby is a road roller.
Cant be so long before it goes. still seams it is easyer for flow go out east vall so it flow against there. but only little stop in that and west one get over run. Can see on the steam where flow going. And camera zoom in some times to valley below and on damm. But turn so fast that i almost fall off the chair 🙂