Killer Lakes

[Richard]

Saw a fascenating show on direct tv, channel 284 (science)

Story about killer lakes.

Degassing the killer lakes, lakes Nyos and Monoun, Cameroon: mitigation of a natural hazard

Long story short, carbon dioxide is fed (naturally) into these lakes that sit over a volcano. Then, like opening a champaign bottle, the lake can explode.

evidently, hundreds of people were killed from asphyxiation when this happened.

Was a VERY fascenating story and urge anyone to watch it.

The above URL was one of the lakes where it happened and what they did to fix it (relieve the pressure of gas out of the bottom of the lake).

 

[EddieWalker]

Richard,

I was the Marine on duty in the US Embassy in Yaounde, Cameroon when this happend. CBS news called the embassy in the middle of the night, or very early morning, and asked about the story that people were dying in the streets. I told them they had to call back during normal hours and made a log entry on the call. Then another CBS news agency called. One after another in just a few minutes. I realized something had happened and notified the Ambassador. He called everyone in right away and they all began to try and figure out what had happened.

Over the next several days, all sorts of scientists started showing up. They'd check in with the Embassy and AID before going to Lake Nyos. When they came back, they found out that refrigerators were very rare. Hardly nobody has them. We had a few in the Embassy and so did AID, they were all cleaned out to put the human samples in. Mostly hearts.

One day while on duty, I had a team show up in the afternoon that looked more like old time gold miners. Dirty, grubby and smelly. They had a large plastic garbage bag with them and they wanted to put it in our refrigerator.

Turned out they were human hearts.

It was interesting dealing with the news organizations and how different they all were from different parts of the world. The US was the worse. Very pushy and rude. Australia was the best. Very friendly and polite.

As a 20 year old Marine living overseas, it was an interesting event.

Eddie

 

[JeffRey30747]

I saw a History Channel program over the past weekend that proposed that this same phenomenon was the most likely scientific explanation for the biblical plague upon Egypt that killed the firstborn of every Egyptian family. It and the other plagues would have been linked to the eruption of the Santorini volcano across the Mediteranean Sea. Only the Egyptian firstborn were killed because the CO2 was heavier than air and the priveleged firstborn slept lower to the ground than anyone else.