Lava, Downpours And Earthquakes
Earthquakes and downpours Wednesday compounded the misery of hundreds of thousands of people in northeastern Congo, where a volcanic eruption destroyed nearly half of the region's largest city and left about 100 people dead in its wake.
The eruption of Mount Nyiragongo on Jan. 17 has left 10,000 families without shelter and hundreds of thousands without any livelihood.
Earthquakes rattled the region, some of them strong enough to destroy buildings that escaped the three huge lava flows that cut through the center of the Goma.
Across the border in Rwanda, which escaped the lava, the Ministry of Local Government reported that 288 homes and 19 schools had been destroyed by the almost hourly earthquakes. Vulcanologists have said Nyiragongo's eruptions are over, but the earthquakes will continue as the magma inside the mountain settles.
In the Rwandan town of Ruhengeri, 30 miles northeast of Goma, the aid agency Oxfam said it was preparing an isolation space for possible cholera cases after some of the Congolese refugees in its camp complained of feeling ill. Oxfam regional director Rob Wilkinson said an initial report that cholera had been detected at the camp was based on "faulty communication."
The International Federation of Red Cross Societies has put the number of dead from the volcano's eruption at 46. Another estimated 50 people were killed when lava ignited fumes at a gas station where people were trying to siphon off gasoline and diesel fuel.
Laura Melo, spokeswoman for the U.N. World Food Program, said the agency will begin distributing a week's worth of food to 70,000 people in Goma for the first time Wednesday. Water distribution began Tuesday, and food was also delivered to 20,000 people who had fled to Sake, a small village 25 kilometers (15 miles) west of Goma.
Heavy seasonal rains added to the misery in Goma where tens of thousands have been sleeping outdoors. Many of Goma's residential neighborhoods were destroyed by lava, said Ross Mountain, the U.N. deputy emergency relief coordinator.
Patrick Nicholson, spokesman for the relief group COFAD, said workers had so far registered 10,000 homeless families in Goma and were ready to begin distributing aid such as blankets and tents which arrived Tuesday on trucks from Atlanta-based CARE and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Mwendo Kambale, an office worker and father of four, said his family was sleeping outdoors in the rain and had run out of food on Sunday.
"The food is arriving very slowly," Kambale said. "I'm not happy because now I have no job, no home, no money and very few clothes."
About 90 percent of Goma's business district was consumed by lava when Nyiragongo, 12 miles north of Goma, erupted and sent huge flows of lava that cut the city in half as they oozed into Lake Kivu.
There are no insurance companies in rebel-held eastern Congo, and the Rwandan-backed rebels who control the city have no resources of their own to assist thvictims.
Goma was one of the few centers in eastern Congo with a functioning economy, and the destruction of its business and inventories spells hardship for all for the foreseeable future.
Nevertheless, the resilience of the Congolese people, who have never known democracy or economic prosperity, was evident when they refused to enter refugee camps in Rwanda, and insisted on returning home to start all over again, using the scraps of the destroyed buildings.
Electricity has been restored to the city and, ironically, the water of Lake Kivu is now safer to drink following the eruption, because the lava heated it to the point where most of the parasites were killed, aid workers said.
The 11,381-foot Nyiragongo and 10,022-foot Nyamulagira volcanoes north of Goma are the only two active ones in the eight-volcano Virunga chain. Nyiragongo last erupted in January 1977.
By CHRIS TOMLINSON
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