Mount Nyiragongo volcanic eruption
Nyiragongo (also spelled Niragongo), one of the world's most beautiful and active volcanoes, is a large stratovolcano near Lake Kivu at the eastern border of DRCongo with Rwanda in the Virunga National Park.
Tens of thousands of people are trying to escape the city of Goma, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), after authorities issued an evacuation order warning that the Mount Nyiragongo volcano could erupt again. At least 31 people have died and 30,000 were forced to flee their homes when the volcano in the central African country first erupted on May 22. Let’s read more about the volcano and its history
Nyiragongo (also spelled Niragongo), one of the world’s most beautiful and active volcanoes, is a large stratovolcano near Lake Kivu at the eastern border of DRCongo with Rwanda in the Virunga National Park.
Most active volcano
The volcano has a 1.2 km diameter summit caldera containing the world’s most active and largest lava lake. Nyiragongo is infamous for its extremely fluid lava that runs as water when the lava lake drains. On January 17, 2002, Nyiragongo erupted and the lava lake drained from fissures on its western flanks.
The city centre of the Goma town, the capital of the East Virunga province, had been destroyed by voluninous lava flows. 200,000 people were left homeless, adding to the human desaster caused by frequent civil wars.
Eruptions in the past
Nyiragongo, located in the Western branch of the Rift Valley near Lake Kivu and the Congolese-Rwandese border, is one of the world’s most active volcanoes.
It is notorious for its lava lake and producing lateral eruptions with extremely fluid, fast-moving lava flows that repeatedly devastated areas around the volcano.
The large lava lake contained in its deep summit crater, now active again, became famous in the 1960’s and 70’s when volcanologists studied it.
It had been active for half a century before it drained in one of the volcano’s recent most catastrophic eruptions in 1977: through openings in its outer flanks in 1977, a huge lava flow poured out and killed hundreds of people.
Tragic state
- Around 8,000 people from Goma crossed into Rwanda for refuge.
- Apart from those who fled to Rwanda, another 25,000 people were also said to have fled to the northwest in Sake
- A 5.3 magnitude earthquake on May 23, destroys several buildings; locals fears of new fissures in the lava lake
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